In the Darkness of My Dreams
by Paimpont
Summary: If Voldemort had discovered that Harry was a horcrux, things might have turned out quite differently. Warning: Attempted suicide, mature content, character death, SLASH, het, and unexpected pairings. Now complete.
1. Prologue: Snape's Story

_From the Diary of Albus Dumbledore:_

_Everything is going wrong. I don't understand it. What is happening?_

_My plan was so carefully laid out; I had thought of everything, down to the smallest detail. There are five remaining horcruxes. Harry has already destroyed the diary, as I knew he would, and I was able to destroy the ring, albeit at the cost of my hand. Harry is supposed to destroy Slytherin's locket, and the items belonging to Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. He is a courageous child, and he has the loyal Ron and the fiercely intelligent Hermione by his side, so of course he will be able to destroy these horcruxes. I can feel my life ebbing away due to the ring's curse, but Severus is going to kill me, and thus earn the death eaters' trust, spare Draco from becoming a murderer, and end my pain all at the same time. Ingenious, if I may say so myself. And then Harry and his friends will kill Nagini. By that time, Harry will have realized that he is himself the last horcrux, and he will choose to sacrifice himself to destroy Voldemort. It will be a difficult moment for him, no doubt, when he realizes that he will have to die, but I know Harry. He will do it; he will sacrifice himself to save others. And then Voldemort's reign will come to an end. _

_At least, that is how I had planned it. But everything is beginning to fall apart. Severus has betrayed me, Harry found out the truth much too soon, a strange change has come over Ron, and Hermione… Well, she is a lot less rational than I was counting on. And then there is Harry. My brave child, the chosen one, the one who was destined to redeem the world… The chosen one is making his own choices these days, strange, terrible, choices I cannot comprehend. _

_My plan was flawless. But the people in it were strangely flawed, and their hearts too unpredictable. I have amassed vast learning over the years. I know more of magic and science, of arts and books, than almost any man alive. But I have begun to realize lately, that I know very little, very little at all, about the human heart and its irrational longings…_

_.._

_Snape's Story:_

They say that Merlin was the greatest wizard of all time, that his power, his intellect and his erudition were unsurpassed. He was the master of all magic, or so he thought. But towards the end of his life, he encountered a magic so powerful that his own crumbled before it. He was the counselor of kings; he could command armies. He could assume any form he pleased. He flew through the sky as an eagle and swam in the ocean in the shape of a fish. Demons and spirits did his bidding; he knew more magic than any man who had ever lived, or any who will live hereafter. But even so, he ended up kneeling in the dust, a broken beggar, pleading for mercy from the one who possessed a magic far stronger than any he could ever dream of.

He met a girl.

They call her Nimue or Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake. Some say she was a fairy or a witch, but perhaps she was simply a girl. She was young, and he was old, and no one holds such terrifying power over an old man's heart as a young girl who says she loves him. They say that Merlin lost his mind, that he followed her around like a madman. His magic was gone, for what magic was left in the world for him now, besides the enchantment of her alabaster skin and the light of her eyes -?

They say she imprisoned him within a tree, and that the great wizard lives there still, in his leafy prison. But sometimes she takes pity on him and grants him a kiss, before returning him to his eternal confinement.

I used to wonder at this tale, at the folly of the great wizard, who was so taken in by a young woman. But today, for the first time, I understood how such a thing could happen. For I am bewitched, like Merlin, and I wish with all my heart never to be free of this enchantment...

Ever since I was a boy, I thought I knew what love was. I used to love a girl with emerald eyes who never loved me back. My love for her was pure and sweet and filled with pain and longing. But today, for the first time in my life, I have realized that my love for Lily was unreal, a dream... It was a love made up of fantasy and shadows, a melancholy longing for something that never was. I dreamed of Lily all my life, but I never held her in my arms; I never felt her lips against mine or the warmth of her body.

I wanted to die when Lily died. But today, I want to _live... _

There was a knock on my door this afternoon. I did not expect anyone to knock; nobody ever comes. I have lived my life alone, my heart heavy with memories. But today, _she _knocked on my door. She entered shyly, lingered by the door. At first, I did not understand what she wanted from me. I asked her to come in, invited her to sit, and I wondered at the flush on her cheeks. She sat in silence for a moment, and I saw that her hands were trembling in her lap. I understood then that she had not come merely to discuss her work, as I had first assumed. Did I realize, at that moment, what she was about to say? I cannot tell, but my heart began to beat strangely in my chest as I looked at the girl before me, whose eyes refused to meet mine.

Why wasn't she looking at me? Her glance had always met mine when others' had shied away. I had liked her for that. They are all afraid of me; the students' eyes all turn away when I look around the room for an answer. But not Hermione. She always looked me right in the eye, and answered whatever question I asked. I admired her for that. Not that I ever thought of telling her that... She was the only one ever worth teaching. And even when my words came out sarcastic and cruel, as they so often do, she still never looked away. Even when what I said was heartless, she still looked at me with her beautiful brown eyes as if she _knew_ that my words were a wall, built to keep others out...

I looked at her, sitting there in my office chair, and I wondered what had finally made her look down, what made her lovely face blush...

"Hermione?"

She looked up, startled. Too late, I realized that I had used her first name. I had not meant to do that.

I corrected myself. "What can I do for you, Miss Granger?"

"I... I want..." It seemed to be very difficult for her to speak. She looked down again. "There is something I want to tell you, Professor Snape. Something I have been thinking for some time..."

"What's that?" I was so taken aback by how vulnerable she looked that my voice came out softer than I intended. I thought of repeating my question in a sterner voice, but realized that this would seem ridiculous.

Her dark eyes met mine for a second, before turning away. "I... don't know how to tell you this..." Her voice was trembling.

Why was my heart beating so fiercely all of a sudden, as if in some absurd anticipation? No, she could not mean... Could she?

"I... Oh, God."

She was not able to speak. But the flush on her cheeks spoke for her. Oh, what miracle was this? I found myself reaching for her hand. She drew her breath sharply. She still did not look up, but her hand rested in mine, as if it had always belonged there. How small it was, how delicate against the roughness of my skin! Then her hand moved. I thought she was going to pull it away, but she didn't. Instead, her fingers began to caress my rough, calloused hand. I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

"Severus-" Her voice, speaking my name, sent a delicious shock through my body. And then she said the impossible:

"Severus, I love you."

And then she looked up, and her eyes met mine. She looked at me like Lily did, in my desperate imagination. Except that Lily's love was never real. This... This was real, and infinitely sweeter than my dreams.

She stood up and flung her arms around me, and I felt her heart beating wildly against my chest. I held her gently, still half unbelieving, and buried my lips in her soft hair. "Hermione," I whispered. "If this is a dream, please don't wake me."

She looked up at me then, her eyes radiant. Still unwilling to fully trust my senses, I held her tighter, worried that she might be an illusion after all. But she was there, warm and real in my arms. I stroked her upturned face, wonderingly. How lovely she was! How could anything like this happen-?

A sudden, terrible thought crossed my mind. "Hermione, have you drunk any kind of potion?"

She laughed and shook her head. "No, Severus. It's not a love potion. Just you. I have been in love with you for a long time."

"But - " My rational mind could still not comprehend this. "But _why? _You are so beautiful, so sweet, so terribly _young... _"

She looked at me gravely. "I'm seventeen." As if that was not young, in her mind!

".. and I am old, ugly, unpleasant..."

She cut me short with a fiery kiss. Oh, the softness of her lips against mine! My body believed her love, even if my mind could not quite fathom it.

"You are beautiful, Severus..." Her hand stroked my face gently.

"You delusional girl..." My voice came out hoarse. I kissed her back, more roughly than I had intended, with a passion built up through a long and miserable life. And, God, how she responded! She moaned against my lips, her hands tearing at my shirt. Was this really happening to me?

"The door... Lock the door, Severus."

I stood still for a moment as I realized the full meaning of what she asked me to do. She wants me to-? _Me? _I looked in wonder at her lovely face, flushed with desire, for me-?

I obeyed her command with a whispered spell and let her tear my shirt off before I pulled her down to the rug, my arms trembling. I felt clumsy; my experience of love was limited to the kind money can buy. But her frantic kisses soon made me lose my awkward self-awareness. How smooth her skin was under her clothes! I traced the curve of her breasts and her hips with a hand that shook a little. I half expected her to shy away from my touch, but she did not. Instead, I found myself in a soft embrace.

At first I did not like to look at her delicate flesh against my scarred, imperfect body; it made me feel like a monster about to ravish an angel. But my angel kissed my scars with frenzy, and she whispered that I was beautiful, until I felt myself become so. It was she who unbuckled my pants and freed my bulging erection. Her soft lips touched my swollen cock, and a playful tongue told me that she was not quite as innocent as I had feared.

I pulled her close to me, and put a gentle hand between her legs. How moist she felt - I was ready to bury myself in her at that moment, but something held me back. "Hermione, have you ever-"

She nodded, and I felt a sudden unreasonable jealousy against whoever had possessed her. "Ron? Or Harry?"

"No, Viktor. Viktor Krum. But it's all over between us."

"Good..." I was glad it turned out to be someone far away, in another country.

I positioned myself over her and rubbed myself gently against her. Oh, God, I needed her! I had never wanted anyone like this... "Severus!" Her need was as urgent as mine. Her body rose to meet me, and her hands pushed my hips impatiently into place. I tried to enter her gently, but she pushed against me so frantically that I finally lost all restraint and abandoned myself to the desire that threatened to tear my very being apart. I made love to her madly, feeling her respond to my rapid thrusts, trying desperately to delay the moment of climax. But at the moment her body arched under me, I could no longer hold back. I came deep inside her, trying to stifle my scream against her shoulder. It was the middle of the afternoon, after all, and people walk by my office. But later I thought that perhaps I wouldn't really mind all that much if someone found out that a lovely and brilliant girl had inexplicably fallen in love with me.

Afterwards, I buried my head in her wild brown hair, afraid to look at her. Perhaps, now that she had sated her curiosity, she would no longer want me? But she kissed me, and her kisses were sweeter than ever.

I held her so tight she moaned a little. "Please, Hermione - please don't go away."

She smiled at me. How impossibly beautiful her blushing face was! "I'm not going anywhere, Severus. I'm yours now."

And I whispered in her ear the words I had never before uttered. They felt odd and unfamiliar, and yet miraculously _right_ in my mouth: "I love you."

...

How strangely everything had changed! How can a man change his soul in one afternoon? I would never again be the same man as I was before she knocked on my door. I had lived in the shadows of the past, with the memory of the dead... But now I had entered the land of the living.

The memory of Lily... I was free. I was no longer held captive by the memory of her emerald eyes. Everything was different now... Even my feeling towards Harry.

I have long understood, but never really cared, that Dumbledore was using my love for Lily for his own ends. He wished me to protect Harry from danger, until the moment will come when Harry must choose to die. And Dumbledore knew me well enough to know that my love for Lily and my wild grief over her death would make me protect her son's life, for now, while the hatred I always felt for James would make me willing to sacrifice Harry in the end. Especially after I learned that the soul of Lily's murderer dwells within her son... I never knew whether to hate or love Harry, the strange child who lived, the beautiful boy with Lily's eyes, her lover's face, and a piece of her murderer's soul embedded within. Dumbledore knew that my love and hate for him were in perfect equilibrium, but that, perhaps, I would have consented in the end, to letting the boy sacrifice himself in order to eradicate the last remnant of Voldemort's soul.

But now... How odd, I realize now that I never looked at Harry as _himself. _I never saw a boy, just a reminder of Lily, and of her death. But Hermione's unexpected love has exorcised the green-eyed ghost from my soul. And now, when I no longer see the world through the haunting memory of Lily, I understand with a sudden dread what I should have seen all along: That Harry is neither James nor Voldemort; he is just a boy, and Dumbledore intends to sacrifice him for the greater good. No, even worse: He intends to manipulate the boy into sacrificing _himself_. Harry does not know that he is a horcrux. Dumbledore feels that he must discover the truth for himself, after he has destroyed the other horcruxes, in order to be ready to make the final sacrifice. What a magnificent and ruthless plan, headmaster! I was reluctantly playing along, but now...

Now everything is different. I suddenly realize that I feel something for Harry that is neither hate nor love: I feel pity. The headmaster intends to sacrifice an innocent boy. Perhaps Harry needs to know what his beloved Dumbledore has in store for him... Perhaps _he _should be able to have a say in the matter before it is too late. I am no longer a blind pawn in Dumbledore's great game; maybe Harry shouldn't be either.

You always thought you could trust me, headmaster. You never wavered in your faith in me. But perhaps it will turn out that you were wrong about me, after all...


	2. The Horcrux

Harry was not the only one to notice that a change had come over Hermione. Ron spent the better part of Slughorn's potions class staring at her, and Harry saw several other spellbound pairs of eyes following her as well. Even Draco seemed unable to keep his glance away from her, but for once, there was no malice in his eyes as they lingered on her. She was _different, _somehow, and suddenly disturbingly beautiful. There was a faraway look in her eyes, and a slight flush on her cheeks. She had abandoned every attempt at taming her wild hair, and it flowed freely over her shoulders. Harry thought to himself that she didn't look like a schoolgirl anymore; there was something about her that was new, sensual, and curiously mesmerizing.

Even Slughorn's glance rested thoughtfully on her for a moment, before turning hastily away. Hermione seemed oblivious to curious eyes; she carried out her assigned tasks mechanically, lost in some secret daydream, and gave an indifferent shrug when her potion began to smoke a little.

"Hermione, you forgot to add the hyacinth."

_Hermione? _Since when did Draco use her first name, and since when did he offer to help her with potions? But Hermione simply took the flower Draco held out to her, dropped it in her cauldron and kept stirring, apparently unaware that something extraordinary had happened.

At Harry's side, Ron had given up on his potion. He just stood there, looking at Hermione and crumbling a dried hyacinth between his fingers, grinding it into a fine, blue dust. Slughorn noticed, but after a glance at Ron's face, he merely walked by in tactful silence and offered a few words of advice to Seamus instead.

"You all right, Ron?" Harry whispered.

"Dunno." Ron's voice was hoarse, and Harry couldn't quite read the expression on his friend's freckled face, something like exasperation, or longing-?

"She's changing." Harry had to lean closer to hear Ron's soft whisper. "Everyone's changing, have you noticed? Even Snape is different these days. I wish I could change, too..."

"I like you the way you are, Ron."

Ron shook his head. "I don't. I'm tired of being me." He threw a few arbitrary ingredients carelessly into his potion, and the ensuing explosion kept the boys busy mopping up acrid blue liquid till the end of the class period.

"Harry, I have a message for you from Professor Snape." Slughorn stopped them on their way out the door. "He wishes to see you in his office right after this class."

A shadow of a familar grin passed over Ron's face. "What have you done this time, Harry?"

Harry thought about it for a moment. He honestly couldn't remember. Oh well. "Don't know," he said lightly. "I'm sure he'll tell me. See you when I'm done with detention."

...

"Have a seat, Harry." Snape's voice was unexpectedly gentle. _Harry? _What happened to _Potter, _and the tone of icy contempt that Snape usually reserved just for him?

Perhaps Ron was right. Perhaps something _was _happening to Snape; perhaps he was under some kind of spell.

"There is something I need to tell you, Harry." Snape's face looked kind, almost _human. _What had happened to him?

"Harry, there is something Dumbledore has been keeping from you. Something I think you should know." Snape hesitated for a moment. "Harry, have you ever heard of _horcruxes?_"

Harry listened in silence as Snape explained, as gently as possible, about Voldemort's horcruxes, about the fragments of the Dark Lord's soul left behind to dwell in earthly objects each time he committed a new murder. And Harry understood that it had to be true; he had seen the piece of dark soul that lived in the diary, and he had seen Dumbledore's blackened hand, destroyed by something powerful and evil... And Snape told him that there were other horcruxes as well: Something of Hufflepuff's, something of Ravenclaw's, Slytherin's locket, and possibly the serpent Nagini.

"But why... Why didn't Dumbledore _tell _me any of this before?" He looked at Snape in bewilderment. "How can I destroy these horcruxes if I don't even know what they are?"

"Oh, Harry." Snape sighed, his lined face looking older all of a sudden. " Harry, the headmaster wanted you to discover these things gradually, to adjust to the thought of destroying horcruxes before..."

"Before _what?"_

Snape was silent for a moment. Then he said, softly: "Before discovering that there is one last horcrux, Harry. The secret horcrux that the Dark Lord himself may not know. Dumbledore believes that he created it accidentally, the night your parents were murdered, that a part of his dark soul lives on in the only human being left alive that night..."

It took a moment for Harry to understand. But then the truth hit him, an icy stab to his heart. He did not speak after that, or cry, or give voice to the agony that was shredding his very being to pieces. He simply sat there, looking at Snape.

There was a glitter in Snape's eyes, as if there were tears hiding there. "I am so terribly sorry, Harry," he whispered. "I know this must be extremely painful for you. But I thought - I thought you needed to know. The headmaster, you see, has planned this out: He wants you to destroy the horcruxes one by one, until only one remains: You. And then he hopes that you will go to meet Voldemort and let him kill you... But I want you to have a choice. You deserve to have a say in the matter, Harry."

_Dumbledore wants me to die... _Harry's thoughts whirled as the last remnants of the fabric that had been his reality unraveled. _Dumbledore planned my death all along. I am a horcrux. I am Voldemort; I am his soul. Why did I not see that till now? In my dreams, I have seen through his eyes, and in my waking hours, I have felt his joy, his fear, his anger, as if his emotions were mine. All these years, I have fought against the dreaded Dark Lord, and I never knew that he was _me._ The evil __I feared __was not outside me, but within._

He got up, slowly. "Thank you for telling me, Professor Snape." He walked towards the door.

"Harry!" Snape hurried after him. "Harry, are you all right? I know that this must have come as a terrible shock to you..."

"I suppose." Harry wanted to get away from Snape all of a sudden, to abandon himself to the pain that was screaming in him, away from Snape's eyes. "I always though Dumbledore loved me..." He couldn't keep his voice from trembling.

There was a strange expression in Snape's black eyes as he said, softly: "The headmaster does not know anything about love, Harry."

...

Harry waited in bed until midnight. He listened to the regular breathing of the sleeping boys around him. Ron was moaning in the bed next to him; apparently he was dreaming again.

Harry wondered if he should bring a flashlight. No, no light; there was a comfort to the darkness.

He felt his way down the stairs from Gryffindor Tower, along familiar corridors, until he reached the stairs for the astronomy tower. _Tonight, I will kill Voldemort, destroy a piece of his soul. Surely, Ron and Hermione will be able to find the other horcruxes. Perhaps Neville will be the new Chosen One. _

A sudden sob tore through him at the thought of his friends. His friends... But no, he was no longer one of them; he was separated from them by the terrible knowledge of who he was. Of _what_ he was. There was only one way out.

Harry sensed a sudden fear, but it seemed to come from somewhere far away, to belong to someone other than himself. Somehow, it did not concern him. He found his way up the dark, winding staircase, up to the top of the tower. He welcomed the icy kiss of the night air against his burning face. There were no stars in the inky sky above him, no sound, no wind. Just darkness. He felt his way in the dark until he touched the rough stones of the battlements. The agony that was tearing his very soul apart seemed to lessen as he hauled himself up on the edge. He tried to look down, but there was nothing to see, just blackness. The dark abyss seemed strangely comforting. It would be fast; he would feel nothing as he dashed against the ground hundreds of feet below. It would be over, mercifully over.

Strangely calm, he reached out for the darkness below and let himself fall into it. No fear, no terror, just a sudden rush of wind against his body.

But a cry rang out, somewhere nearby. And before Harry understood what was happening, he felt himself slowing down, midair. Something was breaking his fall, no, _someone... _He found himself swept up in a pair of strong arms. He was no longer falling, but flying, held tenderly by someone he couldn't see. And he heard a voice speaking to him out of the night: "I will not let any harm come to you. You are precious to me, for now I can feel what you are. You are my very self, my soul..."

The tenderness of the stranger's voice made something break in Harry's heart, and he felt all his icy resolve vanish in an instant. He began to cry, and found he could not stop. And the stranger held him while he cried, cradling him gently, like a child, as they moved through the air. It must have felt like this when his mother held him, long ago.

When he had cried himself out, the stranger lowered him softly to the ground. Harry held on to the stranger's cloak, suddenly terrified of being alone again, of losing the comfort of the stranger's arms.

"Don't leave me." His whisper was almost inaudible, but the stranger heard him anyway. Harry felt himself folded in a gentle embrace, and a voice whispered in his ear: "I will never leave you. But you need to rest now. Where shall I take you?" The voice was silent for a moment. Then the stranger said quietly: "Perhaps it is best to take you back to Gryffindor Tower. But you need to tell me how to get in."

Harry suddenly realized that he felt tired to the bone. "Past the portrait of the Fat Lady," he whispered sleepily, nestling into the stranger's arms.

A soft laugter in the dark. "No, I don't think I can enter that way. Too many protective charms and spells. But if you will just tell me the password, I can work some magic of my own..."

And a few minutes later, thanks to the secret Gryffindor password, a few odd spells in a language Harry didn't recognize, and a mysterious stranger who could fly, Harry entered his dormitory through the window. He found his bed in the dark, and sank exhausted into it.

"Don't go away," he whispered into the night. And a soft voice spoke beside him: "I will be right here with you, the whole night. And every night after that if you want me to."

Harry reached out and found the stranger's arms. He curled up against the unknown body, feeling warm and tired. "But what if someone finds you here?" he asked sleepily. "You are not supposed to be here, are you?"

"Oh, they won't see me. No one will wake up till the morning; I have seen to that." A hand stroked Harry's hair gently. "You won't see me in the morning, when it's light, but I will be here every night if you need me. I will never let any harm come to you."

Comforted, Harry closed his eyes and slept. For the first time in months, he didn't have any nightmares. Instead, he dreamed of being carried through the air by an angel.


	3. Dreaming

Who was his mysterious protector? In the beginning, Harry did not ask. In the morning, he went to class as usual. But when evening came and the other Gryffindors fell into a sleep so deep it must have been enchanted, the stranger was there, as promised. During the first few nights, Harry did not ask any questions. He felt weary, his heart was heavy when he thought of Dumbledore's deceit, and he sought solace in the stranger's wordless presence.

How wonderful and strange, to feel another's warmth against his body! He realized that he had always longed for this sensation of skin against his skin. He had sometimes wondered, when he had seen Mr. and Mrs. Weasley linger over a goodnight kiss behind their children's backs, or students secretly embracing in obscure sections of the library, or even parents on the street in Little Whinging, carrying small children tenderly in their arms, what it would be like to be _touched. _He had kissed Cho briefly, it was true, and received some hugs from Mrs. Weasley, nothing more. And his parents must have held him, long ago, but he had no memory of their touch anymore. Aunt Petunia's hands had stroked Dudley's hair so often, so tenderly, and even now when he was older, she kissed him on the cheek. But when Harry had grown too old for the sharp slaps Aunt Petunia used to give him when annoyed, he also outgrew any human touch at the Dursleys.

He didn't ask, in the beginning, who the stranger was; he merely rested in the unknown arms with a sense of deep and primordial satisfaction. He felt warm and loved as he drifted into sleep, and his dreams were no longer filled with dark, nightmarish shapes and nameless terrors; his sleep was calm, and his dreams were light and luminous.

But as his heartache began to heal, he grew curious. Who was his nightly guest? It was always too dark to see even the contours of a face, but Harry's fingers began to explore in secret what his eyes couldn't see. Male. The stranger was male. His face was smooth, his features regular. His hair felt soft and wavy against Harry's fingers. He guessed by the softness of the stranger's skin and the firmness of his body that he was quite young, perhaps not much older than Harry himself.

But he could fly, break the spells that surrounded Gryffindor Tower, and cast enchanted sleeps, so clearly he was no ordinary schoolboy.

"Who are you?" Harry whispered on the fourth night he felt the stranger by his side.

First, there was silence. Then a voice said softly: "My name is of no consequence. I am here to protect you."

"But I want to know who you are..." Harry traced the stranger's face with his finger, trying to imagine what his face would look like in the daylight. "I don't know anything about you. Except that you are beautiful..."

"A necessary illusion." There was a slight tremor in the stranger's voice. "I don't want you to be frightened."

"Frightened? Are you some kind of monster, then?" Harry thought for a moment. Then he whispered: "You are kinder to me than anyone has even been. I don't think I would care that much if you were a monster. But I want to know who you are. Are you a werewolf?"

"Do you dream of werewolves, too, like your friend?" There was a hint of laughter in the monster's voice.

"Like my friend?"

"The red-haired one. He talks in his sleep sometimes."

"Oh." Harry was silent for a minute, thinking of Ron and his werewolf dreams. Then he said, quietly: "I am a monster, too, you know."

And he told the stranger about Voldemort, about the horcruxes, and about Snape's terrible revelation. The stranger listened without a word; then Harry felt a hand stroking his hair, gently.

"So you decided to die? Because you thought you were a monster?" The stranger asked the question lightly, but Harry could sense an edge of anxiousness in his voice.

"Yes."

"I see." The stranger was silent for a moment. "A horcrux is not easily destroyed, you know. It would take extraordinarily powerful magic to harm it. But your desperate willingness to destroy yourself may have been magic enough. There is a curious power in willing self-sacrifice." Harry felt the stranger shudder a little by his side.

"Do you still... want to die?" The stranger's voice was hoarse in the darkness.

Harry considered for a moment. Then he whispered: "Perhaps not. I think about it in the day, when I go about my ordinary life, when I see Dumbledore and Snape. I feel like a stranger here now, a dark shadow that doesn't belong. But everything is different in the dark. I feel so terribly alone when it is light, but then I remember that you are here, waiting in the dark... It feels like I belong with you."

"It feels like you belong with me?" How lovely the stranger's voice was, like a haunting, long-forgotten song. Perhaps his voice was familiar after all, an echo of some distant memory. "I like that, Harry. I like that you belong with _me. _" A gentle kiss brushed his forehead, soft, like a breath of wind.

...

The next morning, Harry found Ron in the owlery. He had woken up early, suddenly aware that he was alone again as the first hesitant rays of morning sun fell through the stained glass windows of the dormitory. The stranger had vanished with the light, as always.

He saw that Ron's bed was empty and decided to go and look for him. He pulled the Marauder's Map out of the trunk under his bed, and after searching in vain for a name that could reveal the identity of his nightly visitor, he found Ron's dot instead, heading up to the owlery. What was he doing up there at this hour?

Shivering a little in the chilly morning air, Harry threw some clothes on and went in pursuit of his friend.

Ron was standing by the balustrade, watching an owl fly away, a tiny dark dot against the blushing morning sky.

"Who are you writing to, Ron?"

Ron whirled around at the sound of his voice, a deep blush on his freckled face. "Nobody," he whispered.

"It's okay, Ron. I won't tell a soul."

Harry remembered what the stranger had said, about Ron talking in his sleep, and some sort of strange realization was beginning to form in his mind. "You are writing to Remus, aren't you?"

Ron just stared at him, frozen in incomprehension for a moment. Then he said hoarsely: "How... How do you know that?"

"You talk in your sleep sometimes. It's okay, I won't tell."

"I talk in my sleep?" Ron looked panicked at the thought. "What do I say?"

"Don't know... Just something about werewolves..."

"Nothing... really _bad?" _

Harr put his arm on Ron's shoulder. "No. Nothing bad. And even if you did, it would be fine with me, Ron. I am your friend. I wouldn't care if you _became_ a werewolf..."

"You wouldn't?" Something in Ron's voice made Harry wonder.

"Ron? Is that what you were writing to Remus about? Surely, you wouldn't _want_ him to...?"

"Do you think he would do it? If I asked him?" There was a curious longing in Ron's voice.

"I don't know. Remus... No, I don't think he would want to hurt you, Ron."

"Pehaps not." Ron's shoulders slumped, and he looked steadily at the ground as they headed down the stairs together.

But that evening, as they were sitting next to each other in a window seat in the Gryffindor common room, pretending to study, Ron whispered:

"Harry?"

"Hm?" Harry put down the book he was holding.

There was a faraway look in Ron's eyes. "Have you ever noticed how people _look _at him? Remus, I mean? It's easy to see that Tonks is wild about him. He looks tired and shabby sometimes, but there is something about him that's dangerous and attractive at the same time. Even Bill looks at him sometimes as if he can feel it too..."

"Bill?" Harry was puzzled. "But - but he's a _man_..."

A sudden thought struck him. "Oh. Do you know if Remus... I mean, do you know if he would fancy Tonks or Bill-?" Harry knew he had put his question awkwardly, but Ron understood him.

Ron swallowed, audibly. Then he said, slowly: "A werewolf's identity is always changing, shifting between one form and another. There is an ambiguity in their very nature. I read about it once... That's why they are drawn both to humanity and to their animal form. And when they love... They are drawn to men and women alike."

"Oh." Harry looked at his friend with curiosity. He wondered, for a moment, precisely what Ron had written in his note to Remus, but decided not to ask. Perhaps there were some secrets that were not meant to be shared, even among friends.


	4. Remembering Riddle

That night Harry dreamed that he was walking through a forest in the silvery light of the moon. The night was still, and the air smelled of spring. He realized that he was in the Forbidden Forest, but for once he was not afraid of what might lurk in the shadows. He stepped out from among the darkened trees out into a small moonlit clearing. The gray-green leaves of wild artemisia gleamed in the moonlight. He saw that someone was there, a black silhouette against the pale shimmering foliage: It was a wolf. But Harry was not afraid; he went up to the wolf with a beating heart and flung his arms around it. As he buried his head in the silver fur, he felt a strange sensation of pleasure, and he clung to the monster with a fierce and impossible longing.

"You are dreaming, Harry." The stranger's voice was soft in his ear.

All at once, Harry realized that he was not in the Forbidden Forest, but in Gryffindor Tower, and that it was not the wolf from his dream that he was caressing so tenderly. He felt himself flush. Thankful that the stranger could not see his face, he pulled away. What had he done? He whispered a horrified apology. "I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to touch you like that. I was dreaming..."

"It's all right, Harry. All humans dream." The stranger stroked Harry's face tenderly. Surely, he must feel how Harry's face burned under his fingers?

"What were you dreaming, Harry?" There was no accusation or sternness in his voice, only a gentle curiosity. "Were you dreaming of her? The red-haired girl?"

It took Harry a moment to understand. "Ginny?" How did the stranger know about Ginny? "No, I didn't dream of her. I like her, but not like that. Sometimes I wish I could. She is so innocent and sweet..."

"Is that what you think?" Was that amusement in his voice? "I think you would be surprised, Harry. There is more to her that meets the eye... But enough of Ginny. Tell me who you dreamed about."

"A wolf." Harry buried his head in his pillow.

"A wolf?" A moment's silence followed. "So you are dreaming of wolves as well, then?"

"No." Harry found, in spite of his embarrassment, that the dark made it easier to talk. "I dreamed of meeting a wolf in the forest, but it wasn't really a wolf. I just didn't know what other shape to give it. It was... you..."

"You dreamed of me-?" The stranger's voice was a whisper now.

Harry wondered if he was angry. "I'm sorry... Please don't leave me!" He could hear the edge of panic in his own voice.

"Leave you?" Harry felt a hand caress his face again and a finger trace the outline of his lips. It made him shiver. "I will never leave you. You are precious to me. I - I like that you dream of me..." There was a hint of wonder in his voice.

Reassured, Harry nestled into the stranger's arms, his face buried against the other's neck. "What do _you _dream of, then?" he asked sleepily.

"Oh..." The stranger's embrace tightened. "I do not sleep much. But if I did, perhaps I would dream of meeting you in the forest."

...

The next day, Dumbledore called for Harry. Time for another look in the Pensieve, no doubt. Harry's heart beat furiously as he knocked on the headmaster's door. The voice that called out, inviting him to enter, was warm and pleasant, as always.

"Ah, there you are, Harry. Have a seat, my dear boy."

How could Dumbledore look so unchanged? Harry had not seen the headmaster up close since the day that he had learned that Dumbledore wanted him dead. Somehow, he had imagined that the headmaster's face would look different to him now that he _knew_, but the old man's blue eyes were just as kind behind his half-moon glasses. Harry looked at his snow-white beard, his twinkling eyes and his benign smile, and felt a chill run through him when he realized that Dumbledore had not changed at all. The was nothing sinister about his smile, no glint of hidden evil in his gentle glance. Harry wished there had been. The knowledge that the Dark Lord wanted to kill him had been terrifying enough, but Harry suddenly realized that it would be far, far easier to be murdered by an enemy than by a friend.

"You all right, Harry?" How kind Dumbledore's voice was! His kindness seemed far worse to Harry at that moment than his betrayal. Was that the shadow of a dementor falling over the room, chilling his heart? No, no dementors, only the terrifying kindness of an old man...

But something stirred in his memory, the recollection of warmth and a stranger's touch, and Harry found that he could look Dumbledore in the eye after all.

"I'm all right, headmaster," he said quietly. "What do you have in store for me today?"

Dumbledore smiled. "I thought, Harry, that we should continue the tale of Tom Riddle. You will recall that we saw him abandoned at the orphanage by his dying mother; you will remember that he had discovered even before he came to Hogwarts that he had certain powers, and that he used them cruelly. But when he entered Hogwarts, he had learned to hide the darkness that was in his heart. He was such a talented and good-looking boy, and the teachers felt a great deal of sympathy for him."

"But you saw him for what he was?"

Dumbledore sighed. "I did not know, of course, what he was to become. But there was something about him that disturbed me; I recognized a darkness in him."

Harry looked at him. "And how was it, Sir, that _you_ were the one to recognize the darkness and cruelty that others couldn't see? What was it about you that allowed you to see it?"

"What - ?" Dumbledore blinked, clearly taken aback. Then he smiled. "Oh, I don't think it had anything to do with _me, _Harry. What an odd notion! No, I think it was just my experience with human nature at that point in my life that made me see him for what he was."

He held his arm out to Harry. "Shall we?"

Harry nodded, and they stepped together into the swirling waters of the Pensieve. Harry watched curiously as the handsome Tom Riddle flattered a younger Slughorn. Harry had seen Tom as a small child in the Pensieve, and he had seen Tom as a shadow, arising from the pages of a diary. But this was the first time Harry noticed how very beautiful he was. He looked at Tom's dark curls and the shape of his handsome features and wondered at the sense of familiarity. Then Tom began to speak of horcruxes. But just as Tom was asking Slughorn about them, the memory blurred and became hazy.

As Harry and Dumbledore emerged from the Pensieve again, Dumbledore said gently: "Did you see what happened there, Harry? Slughorn tampered with his own memory, changed it so it wouldn't reveal what he told Riddle about the horcruxes. Harry, you must find out what he said. Slughorn likes you; if anyone can get him to reveal the true memory of what was said that day, it is you. I need you to retrieve the real memory from Slughorn."

"Retrieve the real memory?" Harry thought about it for a moment. He didn't need Slughorn's memory to know what had been said: The professor had told Tom Riddle what horcruxes were and how they are made. He looked up and saw that Dumbledore was watching him intently. Of course, Dumbledore thought that Harry must do this, discover the truth gradually... Harry wondered if he should refuse. He didn't think Slughorn would care to talk about horcruxes, and he himself had no need for partial truths anymore. But there was something else, something that made him hesitate. Perhaps he should go and speak to Slughorn after all. For Harry had noticed something odd when visiting Slughorn's memory. He didn't think Dumbledore had seen it, since the headmaster's glance had been on Tom Riddle, the future Voldemort, the entire time they had been inside the memory. But Harry, already suspecting what Riddle was going to ask, had let his eyes wander a little. And he had seen something very strange...

Harry made up his mind. "Yes, of course, professor," he said. "I will do my best to get that memory from professor Slughorn."

"Ah." Dumbledore beamed. "I knew I could count on you, Harry!"

...

Perhaps he should try to write his potions essay first. Much as Slughorn liked him, Harry thought that he might be more inclined to talk if Harry did not neglect his potions homework entirely. He found Hermione and Ron in the Gryffindor common room. Hermione was just putting her books away and rolling up a finished parchment that must have been several feet long. She caught sight of Harry.

"Oh, did you want to look at my potions essay, Harry? If you haven't started yours yet, you may find a few helpful pieces of information in mine."

Harry brightened. "Oh, thank you, Hermione. That would be wonderful. What is the essay about? I forget."

Hermione smiled. "Amaranth, and its use in love potions."

"Sounds useful."

Hermione shook her wild hair out of her eyes. "Oh, who needs love potions?" Then her smile faded. "Oh. Perhaps Ron does."

Harry followed her glance. Ron was sitting in the window seat, looking miserably into the distance.

"Do you know what's wrong with him, Harry? He won't talk to me."

Harry thought that he might know exactly what was wrong with Ron, but he he merely shook his head. "Don't worry, Hermione. I'll talk to him."

"Good." She put the last ink bottles away and headed to the door. Harry wondered where she was going at this time of night, but the slight flush on her cheeks warned him not to ask.

"You all right, Ron?" He sat down next to his friend.

Ron shrugged and kept staring out the window.

Harry understood. "No reply to your note yet?" he asked gently.

"No."

"Don't worry, Ron. It will come. If he was traveling, it would have taken the owl a while to find him."

"You think so-?" There was a faint hope in Ron's eyes as he turned to Harry.

"Yes. I do." Harry hoped with all his heart that he was right.


	5. Slughorn's Memory

_[Author's note: Thanks for the reviews! Your encouraging comments make me want to write more! And yes, I'll try to make the chapters longer...]_

_.._

That night, Harry couldn't sleep. The image from the Pensieve swirled in his mind: Tom Riddle, the charming schoolboy, asking innocently about horcruxes, an angel taking his first step towards damnation. But it was not the memory of Tom's face that kept Harry awake, but the recollection of Slughorn's expression at the moment Tom asked about the forbidden magic. There had been no mistaking the look on Slughorn's face as he had looked at Tom: It was an expression of desperate infatuation.

_Slughorn had been in love with Tom Riddle._ Harry kept turning the thought over in his mind; it was both disturbing and strangely mesmerizing. The desire he had seen in Slughorn's face during that one unguarded moment was unlike any that he had encountered. He had seen people in love, and had felt an occasional twinge of emotion himself, but nothing like this, nothing like the haunting obsession he had seen on the master's face.

What had happened next? Slughorn had told Tom about the horcruxes, of course he had. But had he also told Tom about the hunger in his heart? Harry tried to imagine what it would be like to be Slughorn, gazing into the beautiful face of the yet unfallen angel, reaching out to touch him, stroking his cheek, pressing his mouth against the soft curve of Tom's lips...

Oh, what madness had come over him? Harry felt his face burn in the dark and buried his head in his pillow.

"Not sleeping tonight?" The stranger's voice in the dark was as haunting as the images in his mind.

"No."

"What's on your mind?"

"Too many things."

Harry felt hands reaching for him in the dark, the now familiar arms pulling him into a comforting embrace.

"Let me go!" He knew it was too late; he knew the stranger must have felt his embarrassing arousal against his body as he pulled him close. He heard a sharp intake of breath.

"Harry?"

"I -I just need to be alone right now..."

Silence. Then a hoarse voice came out of the darkness: "You want me to leave?"

"No!" Harry's reply came much to quickly, before he had time to think. Then he answered more gently: "I want you to stay here always. Just... just don't touch me right now."

"Of course. I won't."

Harry closed his eyes and tried to sleep. His heart was beating much too fast, and he tried to will it to slow down. He listened for the stranger's breath in the dark and tried, yet again, to imagine what his face looked like. Somehow, this only made Harry's heart beat faster, and the shameful swelling under his sheet even worse.

...

Harry found Slughorn in one of the greenhouses, carefully snipping leaves from a plant that seemed to have a mind of its own.

"Professor, may I speak to you for a moment?"

Slughorn lit up at the sight of Harry and pulled his hand away from a delicate green tendril that wrapped itself around his wrist with deadly playfulness.

"Yes, of course, my boy. Any time. What's on your mind?"

Harry took a deep breath. "Professor Slughorn, Dumbledore wants me to ask you about horcruxes. He wants me to get the real memory of the conversation you had with Tom Riddle about horcruxes from you, not the altered version you gave him."

Slughorn stood frozen for a minute. All his pompousness had left him now, and he looked frightened. "I don't know anything about..."

"It's all right, professor. I don't need you to tell me. I already know."

"You _know-?_" Harry could see Slughorn trying to pull himself together. "I - I really don't know what you are talking about, Harry."

"That's all right. I know you told him about the horcruxes, how to make them..."

The scissors in Slughorn's hand fell to the floor with a soft thud. A moment after, a tendril appeared out of nowhere, and the scissors disappeared in a flash of green.

"It's not your fault, professor. You didn't know, then, what he would become."

"I should have known better." Slughorn's voice was barely above a whisper. "I should have known better than to tell a student about such dangerous magic. It was my fault... I created Voldemort..."

Harry put a hand on Slughorn's arm, gently. "He would have found out anyway, you know."

"Perhaps." Slughorn's face was white.

Harry leaned forward. "Professor, did you ever tell him your secret?"

"My secret?"

"Did you ever tell Tom Riddle how you felt about him?"

Slughorn was so still that Harry wondered if he was still breathing. When he turned to Harry, he looked positively ill.

"How did you know about that?" There was wonder in his voice, and fear as well.

"It doesn't matter. I just know. I will never tell anyone else; your secret is safe with me. I just need to _know -_"

Slughorn was silent for a moment, and then he sighed softly. There was a distant look in his eyes. "He was so beautiful," he whispered. "He had a face like an angel..."

Harry felt his heart beating. "I know," he said softly. "I have seen him too. But only as a memory..."

He felt Slughorn looking at him thoughtfully, and he flushed a little.

"You know, then." Slughorn's voice was gentle. "Oh, I have met many beautiful people, before and after, surrounded myself with them, like a collector of precious artworks. But Tom was different. There was something about Tom's beauty that tore at my heart. You must think me a villain, Harry, for speaking this way about a schoolboy. I never touched him; I have _that_ much decency. But I wanted to, I desperately wanted to. I used to fantasize about love potions... Yes, I know it's absurd, but I thought as I looked over my supplies of amaranth, that perhaps I would make a potion and put a little in a cup of wine for him. In my mind, I saw him drink it, and I saw his grey eyes grow dark with desire, and I imagined him giving himself over to me, willingly, passionately... Don't worry. I never did it. How could I? Although he was almost a man by then, more than my equal in learning, it wouldn't have been right..."

"You never told him, then?"

Slughorn shook his head. "No. But I think he knew. Tom always knew what others were thinking, even then. Perhaps that's why... why he knew that I would tell him about the horcruxes when he asked. That I would have told him anything, anything at all..."

"When-?" Harry didn't quite know how to ask. "When did your feelings change? When did you stop loving him? At what point in his transformation-?" A picture of Voldemort's terrifying form, pallid and serpentine, rose in his mind.

Slughorn looked at him for a minute, a little smile on his lips. Then he said, simply: "Oh, I never stopped loving him, Harry."

And he retrieved his stolen scissors from the plant and went calmly on with his task of collecting leaves.

...

As Harry entered the Great Hall for tea, he found Dumbledore waiting for him. Curious. Dumbledore usually walked straight to the teachers' table and resumed his place in the headmaster's seat. What made him linger by the door like this?

"Harry, I saw you from the window. I saw you go into the greenhouse to talk to Professor Slughorn. Very good, my boy; I must admit I hadn't expected you to act so quickly. Were you able to get him to give you the memory?"

Harry considered. Slughorn had shared a memory, that was true. But Dumbledore was expecting a little silver swirl in a stoppered bottle, wasn't he?

Harry looked into the blue eyes, twinkling so genially behind the half-moon glasses. "Yes and no, headmaster," he said thoughtfully.

"Yes and no? What does that mean?" Dumbledore looked mildly irritated. "Did you find out more about..._horcruxes?_" The last word was said in a whisper.

Harry nodded. "Yes, headmaster. I know everything about the horcruxes."

"Harry! Keep your voice down!" Then Harry felt Dumbledore's hand pat his arm gently. "I doubt, I very much doubt, that you know everything about them, my dear boy. But I will be very curious to learn what you have discovered. Come to my office at ten this evening, and we will talk."

Harry nodded briefly and scurried off to the Gryffindor table. He hoped his unnecessary conversation with the headmaster would not take too long; he suddenly felt that he could not bear to miss a moment of the precious darkness.

Conversation at the Gryffindor table was languid. Hermione, more radiant than ever, looked steadily at her plate without eating, a shadow of a smile hovering about her lips. Someone was watching her; Harry could feel it. Draco, yes, and Blaise... And then Harry saw Snape. His eyes, impossibly black, were fixed on Hermione, and there was an expression in them of the utmost tenderness... Oh. Harry looked away rapidly.

Then Harry's glance fell on Draco. Draco had seen it too, seen Snape's lingering gaze. Harry saw a sudden look of comprehension in Draco's eyes, and then his pale face flushed furiously. A moment later, a chair scraped against the stone floor, and Draco hurried to the door.

Pansy got up and was starting to follow him, but someone else said: "Leave him alone; he said he is feeling ill..." and Pansy sank down into her seat again.

Hermione, playing idly with her food, did not appear to have noticed. Neither had Ron, who was lost in some dark thoughts of his own. But he looked up, abruptly, when Ginny's voice came from a few seats down the table:

"I got a letter from Mum today. She is worried about Lupin."

"What's wrong with Lupin?" Ron's voice was almost steady, almost casual.

"Don't know. He's been spending some time at the Burrow, you know, helping to plan things for the Order. But Mum says he's been out of sorts lately. He doesn't seem to be sleeping well, and he seems to be spending most of his time writing letters. But he never sends them, he just writes them, and then flings them in the fire and starts over again..."

"Does he...?" Ron whispered.

...

Harry found his way to Dumbledore's office that evening, as arranged. For once, he didn't find the whimsical passwords charming, merely sinister. _Acid Pops. _Dumbledore's passwords used to make him laugh, but now they reminded him, eerily, of Aunt Petunia's constant warnings to Dudley about accepting candy from people he didn't know...

"There you are, my boy. Sit down." Dumbledore waved him into a comfortable chair and looked at him expectantly. "Harry, tell me, what did you find out?"

"Well, let's see..." Harry paused. Should he? "A horcrux is a fragmented part of a murderer's soul, left behind in a significant object. Voldemort created several horcruxes: Tom Riddle's diary, Marvolo Gaunt's ring, Slytherin's locket, an object that belonged to Hufflepuff, and one of Ravenclaw's, and the serpent Nagini..."

It was worth it. Dumbledore's face was ashen as he looked at Harry in utter incomprehension. It was, Harry thought, rather satisfying to play games with Dumbledore, for once.

It took a while for the headmaster to find his voice. "How... How is it possible that you know all this, Harry? Did Slughorn tell you all of this? Impossible, he wouldn't know the details..."

He stretched his hand out. "Harry, give me the memory, let me see exactly what he told you."

Harry shook his head. "He didn't pull a recollection from his head and bottle it, professor. We merely talked."

"Then let me see what you talked about, Harry. Show me _your_ recollection of the conversation between you and Slughorn..." Dumbledore's wand was out, and Harry wondered if the headmaster would try to extract the memory from his head by force. Somehow, he didn't think magic worked quite like that.

"No, professor. What we talked about is between him and me." Suddenly anxious that Dumbledore would seek out Slughorn, Harry hastened to add: ""He only told me what I think you suspect: That he was the one who told Tom Riddle what horcruxes are and how they are made."

"I see. But where did you get the rest of this information, then, Harry? About the identity of the horcruxes?"

Harry wasn't going to implicate Snape either. He merely gave a shrug and noted with some satisfaction that the gesture appeared to irritate Dumbledore.

"Well, once I knew what a horcrux was, it was easy enough to guess, wasn't it? Tom Riddle lived on in the diary, so it was clearly a horcrux..." Harry's mind lingered pleasurably on the shadowy boy from the diary for a moment before he went on: "...and the ring you are wearing appears to contain a dark magic strong enough to destroy your hand. As for the other items... This is the only home Tom Riddle ever knew. Wouldn't it make sense for him to choose to embed his soul in relics associated with some of the Hogwarts founders? And Nagini must be precious to him, since he always keeps her close..."

Something stirred in his mind as he said the last words. She is _precious to him... _Where had he heard those words before? He pushed the thought away for now and studied Dumbledore's reaction to what he had said.

Dumbledore sat motionless, clearly thinking furiously. Then he said, a grim note in his voice: "I have obviously underestimated you, Harry." But then he smiled, and his smile was as kind and paternal as ever. He said softly: "I think we must go on a little journey, you and I, Harry."

"What kind of journey?"

"Well, Harry, I have reason to believe that one of the horcruxes, the silver locket, is hidden in a cave by the sea. I cannot destroy it alone. I need someone to accompany me there. Can I count on you, Harry?"

Harry thought about it for a while. Did he trust Dumbledore enough to do this?

"We should go at once, Harry." Dumbledore got up and reached for his traveling cloak by the door."

"_Now?_" No, he couldn't go. It was already dark, and someone was waiting for him.

"I will come with you tomorrow night, professor. But not now. I am much too tired, and I need to be more alert for a dangerous quest like this. Give me a chance to rest first."

Dumbledore considered for a moment, then put his cloak back. "All right. Tomorrow, then, Harry."

He smiled, a kind and tender smile: "You have done extremely well, my boy. I am so proud of you. Now go and rest."

...

"I thought you'd never come."

Harry smiled to himself at the sound of the now familiar voice. This time he was the one who searched for the stranger in the dark and he who folded the unknown monster in his arms.

"I thought you didn't want me to touch you-?"

Harry laughed. "I was just embarrassed. I didn't want you to feel what my body was doing..."

"Oh." Gentle fingers through his hair. "You don't need to be embarrassed about that, you know. You are only human, with human desires and longings."

Harry's fingers tried to read the stranger's face. "What about you?" he whispered. "Are you human?"

There was no answer, only a soft breath against his fingers. Impulsively, Harry bent down and pressed his mouth against the stranger's lips. They felt warm and trembling against his own. His heart was racing. He parted the soft lips with his tongue, and found the stranger's tongue... The stranger moaned against his mouth, and his arms clasped Harry harder.

"There!" Harry pulled away, breathlessly, and stroked the stranger's face. The skin was warm to his touch. "You are human after all."

"Perhaps I am." There was a hint of surprise in the other's voice.

"I may not be here tomorrow," whispered Harry, pressing a kiss against the stranger's ear as he spoke. "Dumbledore wants me to go with him to destroy a horcrux."

"_What?_" Why was there a sudden terror in his voice?

"There is a locket, hidden in a cave by the sea."

"The locket in the cave..." There was something in the stranger's voice now that was positively dangerous. "And Dumbledore wants _you_ to help him destroy it? He wants to take a boy with him, past deadly curses and Inferi? _Why_?"

"I don't know... I have destroyed a horcrux before, you know. Tom's Riddle diary..."

"So you have..." The stranger's voice was soft now. "A horcrux destroying a horcrux... If only the Dark Lord had known..."

Harry felt a gentle kiss against his lips. "The locket in the cave is of no consequence. But I will not let Dumbledore risk your life to get it."

"What will I tell him, then?"

"You don't need to tell him anything. Just sleep now, my love. I will see to this."

And Harry nestled against the warm body of his protector and slept until morning.

When he woke up, he was alone, as always. But something glittered on his pillow in the golden haze of early morning. Harry held the silver locket in his hand and looked at it with wonder.


	6. Mysteries

The next morning, an unfamiliar owl brought a letter for Ron. Ron did not read it at the breakfast table, but hid it swiftly in his pocket, unopened. His freckles were dark against the sudden whiteness of his face. Soon after, he pushed the rest of his food away and left the Gryffindor table. He did not look back, or offer a word of explanation for his hasty exit.

Ron was not in class that day, and not in the Great Hall at tea time. Harry looked for him in the dormitory. There was no sign of Ron, but a corner of Harry's trunk was sticking out much further than it had that morning. Harry checked quickly; his invisibility cloak was missing. He wondered where Ron had gone, and what his letter had said.

It was only in the evening, as Harry went to the dormitory again to retrieve the silver locket from under his pillow before meeting with Dumbledore, that he saw Ron again. He was lying on his bed now, looking up at the faded velvet canopy above, lost in distant thoughts.

"Ron! Are you all right?"

"Yes," Ron whispered, "I'm all right..."

Harry looked at him curiously; a change had come over his friend, but he did not quite understand what it was. There was a quiet glow, a little smile, a loss of innocence...

"You met with him today, then?" Harry asked hesitantly.

Ron nodded. "They'll probably give me hell for missing classes." It didn't sound as if he cared all that much.

"Where-?"

"The Shrieking Shack."

"Nice."

Ron laughed. "Well, we can't all meet our lovers in the Gryffindor dormitory at night, you know..."

Harry froze.

"How do you know-?"

Ron smiled. "Oh, come on, Harry. I see you in the morning when you wake up. You always reach out before you open your eyes, searching for someone who is no longer there..."

"Oh."

Ron regarded him curiously. "Who is it? You can tell me, you know. I won't tell a soul. At first I thought it was one of the other boys from Gryffindor, perhaps Dean or Seamus, but then I thought I would have seen it in your face if it was... But you don't look at any of them any differently. Or any of the girls, for that matter."

Harry didn't know what to say. "He - he only comes here at night... But he is not my lover."

Then he remembered the trembling kiss from the night before. "Well, not yet..." The words had escaped him before he could think, and he felt himself blush. He wondered if the stranger could hear him, somehow... Where did he go during the day? Was he nearby?

He swallowed. "What about you and Remus-? Are you-?""

Ron simply looked at him and nodded, his face bright red.

"Remus - He is beautiful you know, even with all his scars-" Ron's voice drifted off. Something in his expression reminded Harry of Slughorn, the way he had looked in the Pensieve, when gazing at Tom. "He wouldn't believe at first that someone found him beautiful... Oh, I don't care that he is a werewolf, that he calls himself a monster. Am I mad for falling in love with a monster?"

"No," Harry whispered. "These things happen..."

And with a sense of wonder he realized that Ron was not the only one who loved a monster. He wished, suddenly, that the day was over; he longed for the dark and its sweet secrets, for the stranger's lingering touch...

Then he recalled what he had come for: the silver locket. He yanked it out from under his pillow.

"What's that?" Ron was vaguely curious.

Harry looked at the horcrux; it was cold and heavy in his hand. He sighed. "Salazar Slytherin's locket. I'm bringing it to Dumbledore. He collects these things."

"Oh. Strange man, Dumbledore."

"I suppose you could say that," muttered Harry, sliding the horcrux into his pocket.

...

Dumbledore was already dressed in his traveling cloak. He smiled conspiratorially at Harry: "So, are you ready for our mission tonight, Harry?"

Then he frowned. "That sweater is not enough, my boy, you will need a heavier cloak; it's chilly by the sea..." Was Dumbledore worried that Harry was going to catch a cold before he died? How touching.

"There is no need to travel to the seaside, headmaster."

"_What?" _Dumbledore stared at him. "But I thought I explained this to you last night, Harry. Maybe you didn't understand me. I have very good reason to believe that the locket horcrux is hidden in a particular cave by the sea."

Wordlessly, Harry reached into his pocket, pulled out the locket and put it on the desk in front of Dumbledore.

Dumbledore looked as if he had seen a ghost. For a moment, he simply stared at the locket, his eyes wide in absolute incomprehension. Then he picked it up and turned it slowly over in his hands.

"Where - where did you get this, Harry?" he whispered.

"It came from the cave by the sea, like you said."

"But - I don't understand..." Dumbledore sank back in his chair, turning the locket over and over with trembling hands.

"It's not the real horcrux," said Harry calmly. "I opened it already. It is the one from the cave, but someone had stolen the real horcrux and replaced it with a copy. There was a note inside, explaining it all."

Dumbledore fumbled with the lock for a moment. Then he opened the silver locket and found the note within. He read it in silence.

Then he looked at Harry. There was something in the headmaster's glance that made Harry tremble. How could he ever have thought that Dumbledore was a kind old man? "Harry, I really must insist that you tell me how you got this..."

Harry shrugged. "I found it on my pillow. Someone must have left it there for me. Rather odd, isn't it, Professor Dumbledore?"

Dumbledore's next words made no sense at all. He stood up, suddenly terrifying in his wrath, and shouted at Harry: "No man alive could have retrieved that locket but myself. Did you make Sirius do this? Did he get it for you?"

"Sirius?" Had Dumbledore lost his mind? Surely he remembered that Sirius was dead?

Then Dumbledore's face became familiar again. He shook his head, slowly, and looked at Harry, the well-known twinkle back in his blue eyes . "I'm sorry, Harry. Of course you had nothing to do with it. I can see it in your face."

"See _what_?"

"Ah." Dumbledore's hands, the slender white one and the other, the dead and blackened one, formed a perfect pyramid against his chin. "No, of course _you _would never try to raise the dead. What a notion! I have a mystery on my hands, Harry," he said softly. "And I wondered for a moment if it was connected to your inexplicable possession of Slytherin's locket. You _found it on your pillow?_"

"I did." Harry leaned forward, assuming his most innocent expression. "Professor, I believe someone is playing games with me - "

Dumbledore blinked, then nodded swiftly. "Harry, I think you are on to something!" There was suppressed excitement in his voice. "Yes, that would explain it. Something evil is afoot in this castle; I would not be surprised if it turned out Lord Voldemort was behind it all, somehow or the other... _A horcrux on your pillow! _What could that possibly be, other than a challenge?"

_A gift... A gift from my protector... _Harry wisely kept his thoughts to himself.

Dumbledore leaned forward. "Harry, something sinister is happening. Just this morning, I discovered that something has been _stolen from my office_!"

"Stolen? What?"

Judging by Dumbledore's dramatic whisper, Harry half expected him to say that the Pensieve itself had vanished in a swirl of thoughts, that nothing stirred anymore in Fawkes' sorry pile of ashes, or that the Sorting Hat had been kidnapped by an unsorted villain. He almost laughed when Dumbledore said hoarsely: "_The snitch, Harry._The snitch I kept in my desk. The one you caught during your first Quidditch game."

Harry wondered if he was dreaming. Dumbledore suspected that Voldemort might be infiltrating Hogwarts, and he was worried about his misplaced sports memorabilia? _What? _And what kind of snitch had the power to raise the dead, anyway?

"The snitch. The snitch is missing, professor?" A sudden thought struck him. Perhaps Voldemort wasn't the only one hiding treasures in unlikely objects?

He looked intently at Dumbledore. "What was inside that snitch, professor?"

"Oh, Harry." Dumbledore looked at him, a look of gentle worry on his face. "Something you, in your innocence, have never dreamed of. A magic stone, the necromancer's dream... _The resurrection stone..._"

...

_Finally_. Harry sank into the gentle darkness, into the stranger's waiting arms. Questions. He had a lot of questions. But they could all wait. His mouth found the stranger's lips; his body felt the heat of the other's body under his clothes; his hands tore at the offending fabric that separated him from the warmth of the stranger's limbs...

Warmth. The stranger's warmth against his own. How beautiful he was! Harry found that he no longer cared what the stranger looked like in the light. The light of day is a luminous liar, showing nothing but the surface of things; only in the dark do things appear as they really are...

"I'm in love with you." He wispered his confession against the soft curve of the stranger's lips, so curiously familiar.

A fierce kiss in return, and then a bewildered voice in the dark: "You are in _love _with me? Harry, you don't know who I am - "

He moaned softly as Harry's mouth found its way down his neck. "Don't be absurd," Harry mumbled against his shoulder,"of course I know who you are..."

Harry felt the warm limbs stiffen beneath him. "You _know_-?"

"Of course I know. I know it better than you do. I don't know your name, but I know _you..." _His kisses traveled further down the stranger's body. The stranger... No, not a stranger anymore. His lover. Monster or angel, it hardly seemed to matter. Mere names, of little consequence, compared to the reality of the skin under his touch. He felt the smooth flesh awaken under his kisses, felt his lover's arousal rise against his lips. A moan of protest, and another one, a sweeter, of surrender. The scent of desire... The hardness against his lips... The taste of salt and earth, so new and so familiar, so human...

A scream in the darkness, fingers entwined in his hair... His mouth filled with thick and salty liquid. _I am tasting _you, _tasting your very essence. Felix Felicis was nothing like this... _

A gentle kiss, and a soft whisper against his face. "Harry... Tell me, my love, do you love my body or my soul-?" Something in his voice was desperate for an answer.

Harry held his lover, tight against his body. "Don't be absurd. Those are meaningless names, arbitrary distinctions made up by philosophers who know nothing of love. I love _you._"


	7. Light

The night was full of kisses and laughter. Harry whispered his questions in his lover's ear, and most of them were met with amusement and riddles.

"Did you go to the cave last night, after you left me?"

"I never left you. Even when I went to the cave."

"How did you find the locket horcrux? Can you help me find another?"

"Another horcrux? Certainly, there is one right here-" And he kissed Harry so fiercely that Harry thought his heart would stop. And then a gentle whisper: "But I'm never giving _this_ horcrux to Dumbledore, never..."

And then the stranger's kisses, gentle as a wind, soft as night itself, explored his body, and the silver voice whispered: "I want you to come in my mouth - "... Harry gave himself over to the wild, primordial, frantic desire that rose in him at the other's touch, surrendered himself to the fire of the stranger's kisses. He buried his hands in the stranger's messy hair as soft lips found the hardness of his fierce arousal. He tried to imagine what he must look like, his nightly friend... Were his curls, so soft against Harry's fingers, golden, or were they black, like... The recollection of a dark-haired boy began to emerge out of the night.

A name. A name rose in his awareness, a name that should have terrified him. The sudden intuition, the shock of recognition, should have chilled him to the bone. And yet...

And yet, sometimes the most vivid nightly terrors dissolve in the light of the day; the darkest nightmares are childish notions in the sun. Could it be that daytime terrors grow gentle in the night - ? For Harry felt no fear, only a strange sweetness where the dread should have been.

"Tom!" His voice was trembling, but not with fear; his heart was racing, but not with trepidation. "Tom!"

Harry heard sharp intake of breath, felt a touch that froze and then withdrew.

"Tom..." The name was a moan that sprang from Harry's lips; his hands reached out, found tousled curls, and pulled him gently back...

The name that had been whispered had created something new between them, a momentary shyness, a hesitant alterity. Harry could feel Tom holding his breath, as if he were waiting for a dawning revulsion to replace desire. But Harry's desire had not lessened, merely changed: It was no longer a flame in the darkness, but an all-consuming, incandescent fire...

Harry whispered the impossible name into the darkness and surrendered himself to Tom's caresses, hesitant caresses at first, but gradually more demanding, more possessive. Hands that stroked his shaft, hard and furiously, the wetness of his mouth, his flickering tongue... His climax was a blaze of fire, dispelling the last faltering shadow of alarm.

Afterwards, Harry found Tom's lips in the dark, caressed them gently with his own. But Tom did not respond; he merely breathed against Harry's lips: "Are you frightened now-?"

"No."

"How can you not be? Is this that famous Gryffindor courage I have heard about-?" His voice was shaking now.

Harry stroked his face gently, eliciting a trembling sigh. _I have a power the Dark Lord knows not... Perhaps it is time for him to know it._

He put his arms around Tom, pressed him close to his own beating heart. "Tom? I want to see you now. I want to see your face..."

A silence, and then a kiss, lingering against his forehead. A soft voice whispered: "Only my face as it used to be..."

And the darkness lifted, replaced by a soft golden light, like of flickering candles. Tom's eyes were wide and dark as the met Harry's for the first time. Harry could see that he was nervous. Breathless, he reached out, stroked Tom's cheek. How lovely the color was, the blush that spread over his pale face...

"Can you stay like this forever?" he whispered. "Can you stay in this form, or must you change back?"

"I don't know..." Tom's voice was not quite steady. "I never thought I would wish to go back to being like this, but now I want it more than anything. I don't want to frighten you away..."

Harry flung his arms around Tom. The heart that beat so fiercely against his chest - was that the heart of Voldemort? Or of Tom Riddle? Perhaps it didn't matter. He held Tom close, whispered in his ear: "I told you I didn't care if you are a monster. You saved my life when no one else was there. I love you. _Show me your face now..._ Your other face, your real one..."

"No!" There was a terrified note in Tom's voice. "I don't want to be him anymore. I want to go back. I will find a way; I will find some magic that will turn me back. I will stay in this form for ever, if only you will stay with me, Harry!"

"If you want me to stay with you, you must show me your face. No more illusions, no more darkness. Just you. Your true face."

"No!" A hand stroked Harry's hair, gently. "I have never loved anything or anyone before... I can't lose you now."

"You will not lose me. But you will have yo trust me..."

Tom gazed at him for a long time. And then, slowly, he began to change before Harry's eyes. The dark curls were gone, his skin grew deathly pale, the humanity vanished from his features, replaced by something serpentine...

Voldemort... Harry felt his breath catch in his chest, a flicker of forgotten fear.

But then he saw Voldemort's eyes. The Dark Lord's glance had never held a look as tender as this...

And Harry reached out, touched the pallid cheeks, and pressed his lips against the slit where the mouth should have been. For a moment, he lingered against Voldemort, and then he felt a change come over him again: there were soft lips under his own, a touch of warmth...

Tom tore himself away. He merely sat silently on the bed for a few minutes, his legs pulled up to his chin and his arms wrapped around them. He looked, all of a sudden, like a schoolboy, impossibly young and vulnerable. He did not look up until Harry spoke his name softly.

Then he glanced up, and he whispered: "You didn't even close your eyes... You kissed me, when I was like _that, _and you didn't close your eyes..."

Harry put his arms gently around him, pulled him down on the bed next to him. They lay silently, touching, breathing together.

"What do we do now?" Tom sounded puzzled.

"Well, I'm supposed to find some horcruxes..."

A mischievous grin spread over Tom's face. "We just became lovers, and you are already asking for my soul? Oh, very well, you can have it, I suppose. As long as I get to keep _you... _I'd rather hand you the horcruxes myself than have your crazed headmaster send you off on more dangerous quests. What will you do with them?"

"I have no idea."

"Sounds like a plan, then."

"What about the - Death Eaters?"

"Oh." Tom frowned. "You don't want me to see my friends anymore?"

Harry laughed. "They are your worshippers, not your friends."

"True. They were getting a little tiresome. You don't worship me, even a little, yourself then?"

Harry smiled. "Perhaps a little bit."

"Good. You don't think I should keep Draco, even? I could make him kill Dumbledore for you, you know."

Harry considered, but only briefly. "No thanks. I think I'd better deal with Dumbledore myself. Oh..." A sudden thought struck him: "Did you happen to steal a snitch from Dumbledore's office?"

Tom looked genuinely surprised. "A snitch? No, I'm not really into Quidditch all that much. Although I _do_ appreciate the muscle tone it has given you..."

Harry laughed and brushed Tom's hand away. "Seriously, someone stole a snitch from Dumbeldore's office. He was furious about it, and at first he suspected me. There is something hidden inside it, apparently. Something that can raise the dead: a resurrection stone..."

"Oh." Tom yawned. "I don't go in for resurrecting the dead much. I generally prefer to avoid death altogether." He was warm and sleepy in Harry's arms, and soon his eyes began to close. But Harry lay awake for a long time, listening to his lover's soft breathing in the dark. He reached out and caressed Tom's beautiful face, but lightly, so as not to wake him.

...

Tom was gone by morning, and Harry smiled when he read the note pinned to his pillow: "Gone to pick up a few horcruxes, back this evening. Love, T."

No one else was up yet. The other boys were all sleeping peacefully, but Ron's bed was neatly made and appeared not to have been slept in. Harry assumed that he had gone somewhere to meet Remus - the Shrieking Shack again, perhaps.

Harry couldn't go back to sleep, so he got dressed and decided to go for an early morning walk. But as he passed the portrait of the Fat Lady, he noticed someone in the hallway, a dark figure huddled against the wall.

"Draco?" Why would Draco Malfoy be waiting outside the entrance to Gryffindor?

Draco looked up, and his face was pale as death.

"Draco? What has happened to you?" Harry sat down on the cold stone floor next to the Slytherin boy. What was wrong with him? He looked like he had seen death itself. With a start, Harry recalled what Tom had said about Draco a few hours earlier. Had Draco just committed _murder_?

Harry put a hand gently on the boy's arm. "Draco? Did you kill Dumbledore?"

Draco's face was not white any more; it seemed grey against the flaxen of his hair. "Did I kill - Harry, how did you know about...?"

"Did you?"

But Draco shook his head. "No. I didn't do it - _yet._ But how could you know? _You?_"

Harry felt a stab of pity for the terrified boy. "Perhaps it won't be necessary. The Dark Lord may have changed his mind."

A little gasp from Draco, followed by a shaky laugh. "How do you know these things? Are you a bloody death eater now? Harry Potter, the death eater. That would be something..."

"No, not a death eater." Harry grasped the other boy's arm and yanked up the sleeves of his robes before Draco could protest. He looked at the smooth, unmarked skin on Draco's pale arm. No, no dark mark. "Neither are you, apparently."

"What-?" Draco stared down at his arm as if he could not believe his own eyes. "This can't be possible..."

He looked at Harry with terrified eyes. "What kinds of powers are you messing with, Potter? First necromancy, and now you vanish my Dark Mark..."

"Necromancy?"

Draco's voice was shaking: "Don't think I don't know, Potter. I saw him just now, right here in the hallway. I was waiting here to speak to... Oh, never mind. I wanted to have a word with one of the Gryffindor students."

Harry nodded gently, recalling how Draco had looked at Hermione. Poor Draco! Harry almost felt bad for him.

Draco went on in a whisper: "And then... then I _saw_ him. At first I thought he was a ghost, like the Bloody Baron or that mopey girl in the bathroom, but he wasn't. He was _real, _substantial, and yet there was something about him that wasn't quite alive..."

Harry looked at him in wonder. "Draco, who on _earth_ are you talking about?"

Draco swallowed. "Your godfather of course. The murderer from Azkaban. _I saw Sirius Black!_"


	8. The Order

_From the Diary of Albus Dumbledore:_

_One of my most vivid childhood memories is from the winter when I was nine years old. It was three days after Christmas, and I had already read all the books I had received as gifts. The glory of Christmas (Christmas still held some enchantment for me at that age) had already faded from my mind, and long, empty days lay ahead of me before I could return to school. Some remark of mine that I thought witty had so offended my brother Aberforth that he had withdrawn to his room in silence, and I found myself with only my five year old sister, Ariana, for company. I invited her to go for a walk with me. She was delighted at the prospect, and we strolled together through the village. _

_It was a strange winter; no snow had fallen yet, but it was bitterly cold. A thin layer of gittering frost covered the snowless landscape, but the dead, brown vegetation could still be seen. The flowers had wilted in winter, transformed into fantastic, dark shapes so utterly different from flowers in spring or summer. We walked trough the gardens of a deserted manor house. We were archaeologists searching for the shapes of living summer underneath the dead landscape of winter: These stark brown stems were once a bed of roses, and that forlorn vine that covers the pavilion was fragrant honeysuckle... We came upon a particularly deserted part of the gardens and found ourselves surrounded by leafless trees rather than the memories of flowers. But Ariana cried out: She had seen something on the ground, underneath one of the trees. Something gleamed, red, in the colorless landscape. When we came closer, we saw to our amazement that it was a small pile of bright red apples lying on the ground. _

_Apples in midwinter! I picked one up; it was whole and untainted by rot; it could not have been on the ground very long. But there are no apples growing in winter, and these were not apple trees, but oaks and silver linden. I looked around; had someone dropped these apples here? Impossible - we had not seen or heard a soul in the deserted manor garden that day. But while I was standing there, hesitant and fearful, my sister laughed out loud with joy. She ran over to the pile of apples and picked one up. She bit into it right away, and her eyes widened as she tasted it. She held it out to me: "You must taste this, Albus! I have never tasted an apple like this." The apple was bright red and unevenly shaped, but the inside, where she had bitten into it, was white as snow, with small, delicate threads of red running through it, as if it had some sweet lifeblood of its own. "Ariana," I told her strictly, "you shouldn't eat this. We don't know where it came from." She laughed at me then, and said sweetly: "It came from the garden, of course. It's a gift, a Christmas gift, from the garden to us." _

_I refused to try the apple, and she must have thought it was because it had been found on the ground. But I knew in my heart that it was not rot or disease that I feared, but the utter strangeness of the fruit. It had appeared, inexplicably, where it should not logically _be, _and that thought disturbed me. Oh, I knew quite a bit of magic already, and I was about to learn more in the years that followed, but even magic has an order to it; it follows rules and principles of its own. I have always found comfort in logic, in the knowledge that the world is ordered and meaningful. The world has always made sense to me, apart from that one brief moment when the sudden, inexplicable appearance of apples in winter made something unravel. I came back to the garden alone the next day, to see if the apples were still there, but I could not find even a trace of them. Even as a boy, I could think of several plausible explanations for the curious event of that day, and I have thought of many more since. But in spite of all the logical explanations I have been able to dream up, there still remains a lingering discomfort, a hollowness bordering on fear when I think back to that Christmas and to the dark red apples that appeared in midwinter._

_..._

"Perhaps this is the beginning of a new Order," said Dumbledore softly as he looked around at the small gathering in his office.

He had asked Harry, Ron, and Hermione to come and see him in his office right after tea. But there were others there as well: Professor McGonagall sat straight and thin in a chair by the window, as far as possible from the fluttering Professor Trelawney, who was perched like an immense iridescent insect on a purple velvet pouf Dumbledore must have conjured up for her convenience. Snape was leaning against the wall, quietly observing. Neville and Ginny were sitting together on a low window seat, while Luna was talking in low tones to Fawkes, who seemed uncommonly interested in her conversation.

"We are still waiting for two people," said Dumbledore as Harry, Ron, and Hermione found their seats. "Professor Slughorn will be coming, and by a fortunate coincidence, I just learned that Remus Lupin happens to be in this area as well."

Harry glanced quickly at Ron, but Ron's expression of serene indifference to the news of Lupin's arrival suggested that he knew perfectly well already that Remus would be coming to Hogwarts to see the headmaster that afternoon.

Dumbledore cleared his throat. His intense blue gaze scrutinized each face in turn. "I might as well fill you in while we are waiting," he said quietly. "I have gathered my most trusted friends - yes, I _do_ count my young students among my friends - " He smiled at Neville, who gaped incredulously back at him. "As I said, I have gathered my most trusted friends here today because I need your help to solve two mysteries, which may be interrelated. I must ask you not to repeat a word of what I am about to say to _anyone. _The secrets I am about to divulge must remain within the confines of this room."

He paused for a moment, then said in a near-whisper: "Some dark power is at work within this castle. One magical object has vanished without trace, and another has appeared for no discernible reason: A stone has vanished, and a cursed locket has appeared. The magical stone that was stolen from this very office is an immensely powerful object that has the ability to raise the dead:_ The resurrection stone."_

Professor Trelawney let out a little squeal, but the others merely looked confused.

Dumbledore glanced around the room, and something in his voice made Harry shiver as he spoke: "I must ask you first: Did any of you who are present here today steal the stone? Is there one among you who would attempt to call some poor soul back from the land of the dead?"

He looked them, one by one. Professor Trelawney shook her head rapidly, whispering: "Oh, good heavens, _no! _One does not disturb the eternal rest of those who have passed on. Their revenge... their revenge would be _terrible..._"

"Really?" Luna sounded genuinely interested. "Even if they were sick of resting?"

Ginny smothered a giggle, and Harry could have sworn that there was a hint of approval in the glance Professor McGonagall shot in her direction.

"Oh, I don't think this is your doing, Sybill," said Dumbledore gently, and Professor Trelawney responded gravely: "Indeed not, headmaster. I would hope that I have too much respect for the Otherworld to attempt such a thing. But of course, I cannot speak for everyone in this room..."

The familiar faraway look in her eyes was replaced by an expression of shrewd suspicion. Harry noticed that her glance seemed to linger on Hermione. _Hermione Granger, the dark necromancer? _Somehow, Harry didn't think so, unless it was possible to get an A in necromancy.

Dumbledore's penetrating blue glance studied them all again. "There are many reasons why someone may wish to call a person back from the grave," he said quietly, "but none as powerful as _love_. How terribly tempting it would be to awaken a loved one that has been lost! Wouldn't you agree, Severus?"

He seemed to expect some kind of reaction from Snape, but Snape merely shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. The dead are gone, headmaster, and love is for the living." His voice was pleasant and polite, but Harry thought he could hear a challenge in it as well.

Dumbledore grew pale, but did not reply. He stared at Snape with such disbelief that a casual observer might well have imagined that he had just seen an undead ghost instead of a living potions master.

"Severus is right. The dead need to rest, and the living need to live." Hermione looked at Snape as she spoke. His dark eyes met her glance, and Harry thought to himself: _Even Dumbledore knows it now. It is not possible to be in the presence of a tenderness like this and not understand how they feel about each other... _

He saw the look of comprehension dawning in Dumbledore's eyes, and then the headmaster turned his glance away quickly, as if he had seen something indecent, something embarrassing.

Dumbledore's voice was trembling slightly as he addressed Luna: "How about you, my dear? Would you call your dear mother back from the dead if you had the power to do so?"

Luna put her head to one side and pondered the question for a moment. "I don't think that would be possible," she declared finally. "You see, she has already been reborn. I recognized her last summer when I saw our neighbor's two year old laughing hysterically at a porcupine. My mother always thought porcupines were hilarious; they made her laugh until she cried. So if I call my mother's soul back, little Selena will be left completely without a soul, and that would be a terrible thing to do to a poor little girl, wouldn't it?"

Dumbledore blinked. "Er... Yes, I suppose so," he said. He spoke gravely, but there was a little twinkle behind his half-moon glasses.

He turned to Ginny. "I don't think there is anyone _you _want to call back from the land of the dead for your own sake, my dear," he said gently. "But I wonder... yes, I wonder, if you would want to do it for someone else's sake?" His glance traveled innocently to Harry, and then back to Ginny. Ginny blushed hard, the fierce color of her face clashing horribly with her flaming hair. She did not respond.

"And you, Neville... No, I think not."

"Not unless your stone has the power to awaken the living as well as the dead," said Neville harshly. Harry remembered the empty expression he had seen on Neville's mother's face, and he shuddered.

"What about you, Harry?" Dumbledore's voice was soft, but the softness seemed to have an edge to it that Harry couldn't quite understand. "Earlier today, a terrified student informed me that he had seen your dead godfather, Sirius Black, walking the halls of Hogwarts."

Snape laughed. "Well, I guess that exonerates me, then, doesn't it? Good God, don't tell me that the insufferable git is _back_! Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, no doubt, trying to make his curls fall casually over his eyes the way the girls seem to like... Oh, sorry Harry. I forget, you were fond of Sirius, weren't you?"

"And so was I, _Snivellus_." The growl that came from the doorway made them all jump. Lupin was standing there, looking greyer and more ragged than ever, but with a fierce glint in his eyes. But Lupin's voice turned gentle as he spoke to Harry.

"Harry, is this true? Sirius - Sirius is _back_? Back from the _dead?_"

Harry merely nodded.

"Harry, did you -?" Lupin broke off. "No, of course you wouldn't," he said quietly. "Much as you loved him, you would let him move on, wouldn't you? But then, _who_?"

He paused for a minute, then burst out abruptly: "_Oh. _I talked about how much I missed my best friend... Ron, you didn't -?"

"_Ron_?" Dumbledore's voice was sharp. "What on _earth _do you mean, Remus? Have you gone insane? Why would Harry's best friend..." His voice died away as Ron turned and looked at Remus.

Ron shook his head and said softly: "No, Remus. I didn't. But that's only because I didn't know there _was _a stone that could bring him back."

Lupin looked at Ron's flushing face for a moment, then said thoughtfully: "Perhaps I was wrong, Ron. Perhaps there _is _a touch of wolf in you after all..."

"I don't understand. Remus, what is going on here-?" Dumbledore began. He broke off as the door to his office opened again. "_Finally_, the last member of this trusted circle of friends... But what is the matter with you, Horace? You look as if you have seen a ghost..."

And Professor Slughorn, who had just appeared in the doorway, did have strange, absent look about him. He moved slowly, like a man walking in his sleep. Lupin grasped his arm and steered him quickly to a deep armchair. Slughorn sank down in it, trembling.

"You _have _seen a ghost, haven't you, Horace?" Dumbledore's voice was gentle. "And I think I can guess who it was, too. _Sirius Black..."_

But Slughorn merely shook his head and wiped a few drops of perspiration from his forehead with a delicate little lilac handkerchief. "Sirius Black? The escaped death eater? Oh, no headmaster, I have seen something far more miraculous than an undead death eater..."

He dabbed his forehead again and whispered, his voice almost inaudible: "I saw _him, _out on the grounds right now, strolling past me under the trees."

"Him _who_?" Dumbledore was tugging at his beard.

Slughorn smiled a little. There was a faraway look on his face. "Tom Riddle of course. _Voldemort._ Except that he was not Voldemort; he was _Tom_, just as he was when I last saw him, fifty years ago."

"You saw Tom Riddle? _You saw Voldemort on the Hogwarts grounds_?" Dumbledore stood up now, but clutched his desk as if he needed its support.

"Yes, exactly." Slughorn spoke softly. "He came walking toward me, you see, and as he passed me, he... he simply bowed his head a little and said, ever so politely, "Good afternoon, Professor." Just like that, as if the fifty years in between had been nothing but a dream. And I just looked at him and said: "Good afternoon, Tom." And then we smiled at each other, and we both walked on. Odd, isn't it, headmaster?"

"_Odd? Voldemort strolls past you on the Hogwarts grounds, and you smile at him?_" Dumbledore was shouting now. He made a fist with his remaining healthy hand and slammed it into his desk. "What is happening? What has come over all of you? Harry, Ron, Hermione, Severus, Remus, Horace - What terrible change has come over all of you? Have you all been bewitched? _What is happening?_"

Minerva McGonagall sighed and put her hand on the irate headmaster's arm. "What is happening, Professor Dumbledore," she said gently, "is that the Order you were dreaming of is falling apart."


	9. The Chamber of Secrets

That night, Tom came with the darkness, as always. Even though his arrival was soundless, Harry could feel his presence in the dark and reached out for him. _Finally... _But after the initial frantic kisses, Tom pulled back and whispered:

"Harry? Will you do something for me?"

Harry found Tom's lips again in the darkness and breathed against them: "Anything. You know that. Just show me what to do..." His hands began to explore, softly.

Tom laughed. "I didn't mean _that_ kind of something, but now that you mention it, I do have a few ideas for later on..." He stroked Harry's face gently. "I need your help, Harry." Was there a note of anxiousness in his voice?

"Of course. What do you need me to do?"

Harry felt Tom's hand tremble a little against his cheek. "Do you remember the prophecy about the two of us? The one that shattered at the Ministry-?"

"I don't believe in prophecies anymore. They are just words. Who cares about words? _This, _on the other hand, is real..."

Tom returned Harry's kiss, but then he whispered: "I have always believed that prophecy to be true. _Neither can live while the other survives. _I need you to do that which you were destined for, Harry. I need you _to kill Voldemort..."_

_"What? _What are you talking about? _Lumos!_"

Harry expected light to burst from his wand, but nothing happened. He heard Tom's laughter in the dark.

"That spell won't illuminate the kind of darkness I cast, Harry. I _am _rather good at magic, you know. Here, I will give you light." Tom whispered a word in an unknown ancient tongue and a gleam of soft light appeared between them.

Tom's face was pale in the flickering light, but still so lovely it took Harry's breath away.

"What do you mean - _kill Voldemort?_ I could never harm you, you know that."

" I am not asking you to kill my body; I am asking you to destroy my soul. I am asking you to kill _Voldemort. _I showed you once how that name was created: I had constructed that dark appellation out of the letters of the name I despised: Tom Marvolo Riddle. But now my old name has become infused with magic; you have whispered it with love and cried it out in passion - how can _Tom_ not be precious to me now? But the other name, the name you must have feared, has grown repulsive: _Voldemort. _A dark and unnatural creature, made from fear and power lust... Perhaps the prophecy was right: He cannot survive in a world that also holds _you... _He must die at your hands, my love, as it was meant to be. All the fragmented parts of my soul, the splinters of self that were formed when Voldemort was created, must be destroyed, except for two: The part of my soul that dwells in you and the part that lives in me."

"You want me to destroy the horcruxes - ?" Harry whispered.

Tom nodded.

"But what - what will that do to _you_? If the horcruxes are destroyed, what will happen to you?"

"Perhaps it will make me more human... Perhaps it will make my soul whole, except for the part of it that will always dwell in you. _Please_. I need your help. I tried to do it myself, after I had gathered the remaining horcruxes, but I found myself unable to destroy them."

"Where are the horcruxes now? Where did you bring them?"

A smile illuminated Tom's angelic face. "Where do you think, Harry?"

Harry thought for a moment; then he knew. "The Chamber of Secrets, where I first saw you as Tom rather than Voldemort, and where I destroyed the first horcrux..."

Tom nodded and reached for Harry's hand. "Shall we go?"

...

The landscape of night is always different from the familiar daytime one. Night is not just absence of light, thought Harry; it is the presence of something mysterious and haunting that fades in the day. Myrtle's bathroom looked unfamiliar and enchanted at night. The heavy silver faucets gleamed in the moonlight that fell softly through the arched windows, and the white marble was luminous among the shadows. Tom was the one who spoke the password in Parseltongue, and the whispered word, echoing against the stony walls, made Harry shiver. How strangely sweet that word sounded, spoken in Tom's silvery voice...

He felt himself blush under the scrutiny of Tom's glance.

"The sound of Parseltongue turns you on? Really?" Tom sounded amused.

"Mmmhmm."

"I will remember that..." Tom muttered as the snake figure by the sink moved aside. "Shall we?" He motioned to the dark pipe that opened before them. Harry took his hand, and they entered the pipe together.

Harry had expected the chamber to be dark, but found to his surprise that it was lit by flickering torchlight. Tom froze by his side. "Someone's here..."

A figure rose from a heap of blankets in a dark corner and approached them slowly. The golden torchlight fell over his face as he came closer, revealing a pale, handsome face surrounded by long dark curls.

"_Sirius!_" The joy Harry felt at seeing his godfather again overpowered the momentary stab of superstitious fear, and he flung himself into Sirius' arms. Sirius was alive again! No, not fully alive, perhaps; there was a sense of something empty, something absent - But he was Sirius all the same, and his smile at seeing Harry was real.

Sirius squeezed him so tightly he could hardly breathe. "Harry! I am so sorry, so terribly sorry! I should have been more careful at the ministry - I can't believe I let myself be killed by that bi-" He grinned. "Er... by my cousin," he finished lamely. "Harry, how have you _been? _I can never forgive myself for abandoning you like that, by doing something as stupid as _dying..._" He made a wry face that made Harry laugh.

Then Sirius caught sight of Tom. "Oh. I don't think we have met-?"

Tom was silent for a moment, studying Sirius intently. Then he said quietly: "I'm a friend of Harry's. My name... is Tom."

"Sirius-" Harry couldn't take his eyes off his godfather, couldn't really believe that he was _here. _"Sirius, how can you be here? Dumbledore says someone stole a resurrection stone. Who - who called you back? And why?"

There was a strange light in Sirius' dark eyes as he said softly. "I was wanted..."

"But _who-_?"

Sirius' glance fell on the tangled pile of blankets in the corner of the chamber. Now Harry noticed the outline of a human form below the covers.

"She is sleeping," said Sirius. "Let her sleep..." There was tenderness in his voice.

"Who-?" Then Harry noticed a strand of long hair that had fallen out from under the blankets and rested on the rough stone floor; its fiery red hue glowed in the warm torchlight.

"_Ginny_-?" He felt his head spinning. Of course, Ginny had once been brought to the Chamber of Secrets; perhaps she still recollected the password she had heard back then... "But why would she-?"

"Don't you understand?" Sirius' voice was soft. "She _wanted_ me, you see. Enough to call me back from the dead."

"She _wanted_ you? But she is just a young girl..."

These was pity in the glance Sirius gave him. "She is only a year younger than you, Harry. But you never noticed that she became a woman, did you? No one ever noticed that she was no longer a little girl, but a passionate woman filled with thoughts and ideas and desires of her own... She had a crush on you, you know, at first - but you always saw her as a little girl. Then she fell in love with me, and no one noticed. No one saw how she grieved when I died; everyone was busy thinking about _your_ grief. And no one noticed the fierce and terrible determination that grew within her: She swore to find a way to bring me back..."

Harry stared at the lock of flaming hair against the grey stone. No, he had never understood Ginny...

"Are you happy, Sirius?" he whispered. "Do you want to be here? Do you love her?"

"I don't know..." A shadow fell over Sirius' handsome features, a shadow that reminded Harry that Sirius was not, after all, a living man. "Do I love her? Can you love the flame that consumes you? I am obsessed with her, possessed by her desire, haunted by it, and I do not want it to be otherwise. Yes, this must be love, I am certain of it. But somehow I feel that I am no longer _me; _I am merely a shadow. I am her lover, but can I truly love when I am no longer myself?"

"Oh, Sirius!" Harry hugged him gently.

"Strange, isn't it?" whispered Sirius. "I have heard of the dead haunting the living, but never before of the living haunting the dead..."

He walked over and gathered the sleeping girl in his arms. "I should bring her back to her dormitory." He bent down and kissed the flaming hair with trembling lips, then carried her out of the chamber.

Harry stared after him. "Poor Sirius!" he said quietly.

"You love him..." Tom's whisper was soft by his side.

"Yes, of course I do."

"More than you love me-?" Tom's face was white.

"What-?" It took Harry a moment to understand. "Oh, don't be absurd. It's not the same kind of love; Sirius is like the father I never knew."

"The father you never knew because he was murdered by a dark wizard..." Tom's voice was hoarse.

Harry flung his arms around him. "That part can't be changed, Tom." He pressed his lips to Tom's ear and whispered in Parseltongue: "_I love you. I will never love anyone else like this_..."

Tom moaned softly. He buried his lips in Harry's hair and murmured: "You know, I had thought you could use a basilisk fang to destroy the horcruxes, but maybe it won't be necessary. Apparently, you have the ability to destroy me simply by speaking in serpent tongue..."

Harry laughed and kissed him gently. "You have a weakness for Parseltongue, too, do you? Come on, Tom. Show me the horcruxes. Let's get to work."

Tom led him silently to a hidden alcove in the chamber. He moved a few basilisk fangs aside and reached in to retrieve a velvet pouch. "Here-"

He opened the pouch and laid the contents on the ground. "Slytherin's locket, Hufflepuff's cup, and Ravenclaw's diadem."

Harry leaned closer. Something about the ancient artifacts before him pulled at his heart, drew him closer... He reached out and touched the locket, the real one. _Tom's soul is in there..._

He looked up and met Tom's glance. Tom's expression was hard to read, but Harry thought he detected a flicker of fear in his lover's grey eyes.

"What about Nagini, the serpent?"

"Sleeping, in another part of the chamber. She will not wake until I call her. When you are ready... She will have to be the last."

Harry drew a deep breath. "All right." He sensed Tom shivering next to him as he reached for a basilisk fang.

_The locket._ First the locket. He lifted the fang above it. Something in his heart screamed; he did not want to do this. _Tom's soul - _how could he destroy even a fragment of Tom's soul?

_I must do it in order to redeem him,_ another voice whispered in his heart.

"Tom - " He glanced up at Tom's face, so deathly pale now. "Tom, there is something you need to do before I destroy the horcrux. You must tell me how you made it, you must speak of the murder you committed..."

"Tell you_-?_"

"It's the only way, Tom." Harry was suddenly certain of this.

"All right." Tom's voice trembled. "I made the locket horcrux when I murdered a homeless Muggle. He had done me no harm; he was merely an old man who represented to me, then, the Muggle heritage that I wanted to eradicate from my soul. By murdering him, I destroyed the Muggle half of myself, and I poured a part of my soul into this memento of the pureblood Slytherin..."

"Tell me you name."

Silence. Then: "My name is Tom Riddle. I am my father's son, and I bear his name."

"It is a beautiful name," said Harry softly. Then he raised the basilisk fang and plunged it into Slytherin's silver locket.

A slight cry, as if of pain, escaped Tom's lips. Harry dropped the fang to the ground, next to the shattered locket, and flung his arms around Tom. "Did that hurt you?"

"Yes," whispered Tom against his mouth, "Yes, it was... excruciating... It felt like dying. I wonder if this is how the old Muggle felt when he died."

Harry did not know what to say. Something felt wet against his face; it took him a moment to realize that it was Tom's tears. _You are becoming human now, my dark Lord... You have remembered how to weep... _Harry kissed the tears gently from his cheeks.

"The cup, Tom. Now tell me about the cup horcrux."

"The cup - " Tom spoke quietly. "I turned the cup into a horcrux when I murdered an old witch named Hepzibah Smith, descendant of Hufflepuff herself. I had charmed and flattered her, and she fell for me, the young Tom Riddle, just like my mother had fallen for another Tom Riddle years ago. Hepzibah was smitten by my good looks, and I despised her for it. Perhaps I saw my mother in her, the desperate witch who had fallen for a handsome young Muggle man. And I saw her foolishness reflected in Hepzibah's eyes, and I wished to kill her for it. But she was not my mother; she was a lonely old woman whose only crime was thirsting for love... And perhaps that was my mother's only crime as well..."

"Do you understand that thirst now, Tom?"

"Oh, God, how can you ask?" Tom clung to him. Harry freed himself gently from the fierce embrace. This time, as he smashed the silver cup with the basilisk fang, there was no cry, just a slight moan. Tom had sunk to the floor now. Harry kissed him softly on the forehead.

"The diadem, Tom."

He had to lean over Tom to hear his soft whisper now: "I murdered an Albanian peasant. This time there was no reason, no desperation in my soul that led me to see someone I hated in my unfortunate victim... This time, it was meaningless. I simply wished to kill someone, anyone, in order to create a horcrux. I felt no hesitation, no regret. I had become less that human, and I no longer felt any emotion when I killed. Afterwards, I could not even recall his face."

"Do you recall it now?"

"Yes. Now I do... Oh, God, the terror in his eyes... I think it will haunt me all my days." Tom shivered. Harry reached out, stroked his hair gently.

"Now call for Nagini, Tom."

Tom swallowed, but nodded. He whispered a quick command in Parseltongue, and for the second time in his life, Harry sensed a large serpentine form gliding toward him in the Chamber of Secrets.

The green serpent slithered out of the shadows. Harry drew his breath; how lovely she looked in the flickering golden light...

"I killed Bertha Jorkins," said Tom hoarsely. "But this time I killed out of fear. She had found out that young Barty Crouch was still alive, and she would have exposed him had I not killed her. And I needed him, my faithful servant, to be my spy inside Hogwarts. I needed him in order to get at _you. _I needed to kill you, because in my heart I feared that you would fulfill that dreaded prophecy I had been told about, the one that suggested to me, the immortal Voldemort, that I might one day die at the hands of a boy named Harry Potter..."

"Do you still wish to kill me?"

"Oh, Harry, how can you ask?" Tom reached for a basilisk fang and handed it to Harry. "Let the prophecy be fulfilled. It is time for Voldemort to die..."

But as Harry lifted the basilisk fang to strike, the serpent spoke to him in a familiar tongue: "You do not really wish to make him human, do you? If you destroy me, he will be a mere mortal, no longer Voldemort. But is it only the mortal Tom you love? Is there no hidden part of your heart that loves the Dark Lord as well? Is there no part of you that is drawn to the monster?"

What was this dreadful hesitation that filled his heart? Did Nagini speak the truth? Was there a part of him that loved Voldemort as well as Tom?

Harry's glance fell on Tom. He was deathly pale in the flickering torch light, but there was a new expression in his eyes, something vulnerable that made him more beautiful than ever. Something _human. _

Harry hesitated to longer. He lifted the basilisk fang above his head and struck it into the serpent with all his might. He felt it sink into her flesh, and with a rapid motion he ripped the head off the snake.

This time, he was the one who fell to the floor, and it was Tom's arms that lifted him gently up. The kiss that was pressed against his lips was soft, trembling, warm. Human. Deliciously human...

"Come now," said Tom gently. "It's time to go." He looked around at the shattered horcruxes, including the beheaded serpent. "I suppose we should bring these... trinkets with us."

"I suppose," said Harry, his voice still shaking. "Perhaps I should bring them to Dumbledore tomorrow. Don't you think he would be pleased if I bring him a box of horcruxes?"

Tom laughed. "I wouldn't be so certain of that if I were you. But it's not yet tomorrow, my love. Let's go back to Gryffindor Tower. I need to be with you." A sudden mischievous smile lit up his face. "And human or not, I still know how to speak Parseltongue. It can be a rather suggestive language, you know..."


	10. The Dark Lord Vanquished

They found their way back to the dormitory. No one stirred as they entered; the enchanted sleep that Tom had cast would last until morning.

"Darkness or light?" asked Tom in a whisper as they sank down on Harry's bed.

"Darkness. You are still more familiar to me in the dark."

And the darkness fell softly around them, obscured all visible forms. Harry found Tom's face in the dark and traced its outline with his fingers.

"Is this your real face now?"

"I don't know yet," whispered Tom. "Perhaps it will be. This is how you want me to be, isn't it?"

Harry smiled in the dark. "I think so, yes." He kissed Tom's soft lips. "Although..."

"Although what?" Tom's hands caressed him as he spoke, found his skin under his clothes, set his body aflame.

Harry breathed against him. "I always feared your dark form, the terrifying Voldemort. I used to wake up screaming in the night at the thought of the dread Dark Lord. But perhaps there was also a hint of desire hidden under the fear. How strange that sounds! But I had never been close to anyone, you see, like a parent or a lover. And when I learned that you and I were bound together by prophecy and destiny, there was a... a sense of inevitability about us, about you and me, that felt almost like love..."

"I remember that..." Something in Tom's voice made Harry shiver. "_Harry Potter. _I couldn't get you out of my head. I hated you, but there was a certain intoxicating sweetness to that hate. I wonder if hatred that intense and personal always lingers on the brink of something else. Perhaps hate and love are like darkness and light, two different perceptions of the same underlying reality. _You and me._ That part was always real, always true, but our hate and love were interchangeable."

"How odd to think," whispered Harry, "that nothing is left of Voldemort now, except _me. _The last horcrux."

He felt Tom's arms around him, hard. "Come here, my Dark Lord, I want to make love to you..." Tom's voice was soft in his ear.

And Harry lost himself to Tom, to their wild forbidden love. _My lover, the Dark Lord... _Their bodies joined in new ways that seemed so familiar to Harry that he must have dreamed of them already. Perhaps he had always wanted to feel Tom inside him like this, and feel the sweet fierce joy of entering Tom in return. Their very beings blurred; they were lover and beloved, darkness and light, but Harry could no longer tell which was which. _I am the Dark Lord..._

Afterwards, as they lay exhausted and sore in each other's arms, Tom whispered: "Let's go away somewhere... Why do you need to stay here at Hogwarts?"

Harry muttered against his cheek: "I'm supposed to finish my education so I can vanquish the Dark Lord."

Tom laughed. "The Dark Lord is thoroughly vanquished, my love. Let's find a place where we can be alone together. Where would you like to live?"

Harry thought about it. "I don't know. I have never traveled anywhere."

"Hm." Tom reflected. "The Albanian countryside is rather lovely, but there are too many memories attached to Albania for me. I want to go somewhere new."

"How about Hungary, then? I have rather fond memories of a Hungarian Horntail dragon. A little temperamental, but with a certain gruff charm."

"Hungary it is, then," muttered Tom sleepily. "The wine is good there, and the people are too busy reading existentialist novels to pay attention to two foreign wizards."

"I suppose I should give Dumbledore the broken horcruxes before I leave."

"Why not? He may choke on a lemon drop if you plop the head of a dead serpent down on his desk. It's worth a shot."

...

In the morning, Harry found Ginny in the common room. The white light of early morning shimmered through the tall arched windows and lent a strange otherwordliness to the familiar room. The silence of the room in that early morning hour seemed to be more than just the absence of voices; it was the hushed and solemn silence a cathedral. Ginny sat by the window. Her hair looked wild and uncombed, but her face was serene, as if she was lost in a dream or a prayer. Somehow, she didn't look familiar to him any more.

"Ginny? Can I talk to you for a bit?"

She nodded wordlessly, and he sat down next to her in the window seat. Harry felt suddenly shy, as if he were approaching a stranger. She was no longer the child he had rescued from the Chamber of Secrets, but a woman he did not know. He recalled the look on Sirius' face as he had buried his lips in her fiery curls, and he wondered to himself if she had really needed the resurrection stone to call him back. Perhaps her flaming hair and ivory skin would had been enough...

Her dark eyes met his, but he could not read their expression.

"Ginny," he said softly. "I know it was you. You took the resurrection stone from Dumbledore's office and brought Sirius back."

He had half expected her to deny it, but she merely looked at him.

"Please, Ginny... I know you are in love with him, but what you are doing isn't right. Sirius does not belong here; he is dead. You need to let him go; you can't let him linger here as some sort of ghost. This isn't what love is supposed to be like." He swallowed.

Ginny laughed. Her silvery laugh sounded somehow irreverent in the haunting morning silence of the room, as if she had disturbed the quiet of a chapel.

Why was she laughing? Harry had expected her reaction to be different. Despair, perhaps, a heartbroken confession that her infatuation with Sirius had led her down the wrong path, a plea for help. But Ginny had laughed.

"Do you really think you are in a position to give me advice on love, Harry?" Her dark eyes glittered.

He stared at her. "What-?"

"Sirius may not have recognized your companion in the Chamber of Secrets last night, but I certainly did. Or did you think I could forget Tom Riddle? We spent quite a bit of time with each other, you know."

It took a while before Harry found his voice. "But you were sleeping last night, in the chamber..."

"I was just pretending. People are so easily fooled." Ginny got up from her seat, impatiently. "I saw how you looked at him, and he at you. You are the Dark Lord's lover, and you dare to lecture _me..._" There was fury in her voice now.

"But Ginny-" Harry's voice faltered. "If you love Sirius, wouldn't you want what's best for _him_? You need to set him free."

"Sirius doesn't want to be free..." said Ginny softly.

"But what about his soul? If you love him, wouldn't you want his soul to move on?"

"No," said Ginny simply.

She tossed her fiery hair out of her eyes and moved toward the door without another word. But suddenly she froze mid-step. They had both heard it, a slight sound, startlingly clear in the stillness of the common room. One of the tall wing-backed chairs by the fireplace had scraped against the floor. Someone was there! A figure rose out of the chair and turned toward them. It was Neville.

Harry and Ginny both stood petrified, staring at him. Harry felt his heart beating furiously in his chest. Neville must have heard every word they had spoken. What would he do now? Go to Dumbledore? To McGonagall? He could feel Ginny trembling slightly by his side, and her face was deathly pale.

But Neville merely stood there and looked at them for a while.

Ginny found her voice first. There was barely a tremor in her voice as she spoke: "So, you heard us. You know I took the stone to bring Sirius back. Are you shocked, Neville?"

But Neville shook his head, a slight smile flitting over his round and pleasant face. "I always knew it was you, Ginny."

Ginny's eyes widened. Her voice sank to a whisper. "You knew it was me? But how could you know?"

Neville looked at her for a moment in silence. Then he said. "I saw it in your face, Ginny. I saw it when you fell in love with him, I saw it when you grieved over his death, and I saw it when you decided to bring him back from the dead."

"You did? But no one else ever saw any of it..." Ginny's voice was almost inaudible now. "So how could _you_?"

"I saw it because I'm in love with you, of course," said Neville. He said it simply, without drama or tragedy, as matter-of-factly as if he were referring to the weather or some well-known natural law.

Ginny stood staring at him, her face flushed now. Harry wondered what she could be thinking.

Then Neville spoke softly: "Ginny, would you like to come to Slughorn's party with me tonight?"

"What? To Slughorn's _party_?" Ginny looked at him for a moment in incomprehension. Then she whispered. "Will you tell Dumbledore if I don't-?"

Neville frowned. "How can you ask me that? I don't tell tales; you have nothing to worry about. Either of you..." He gave Harry a curious look and shook his head. "I was simply wondering if you would like to go to the party with me. It's an invitation, not an attempt at blackmail. I don't expect anything from you Ginny. I just thought that you might enjoy one night among the living. Afterwards, I understand if you want to go back to _him, _but please give me this one chance..."

"A _party?_" Ginny stared at Neville for a long time. He waited, silently. Finally, she said: "I suppose one night among the living isn't such a bad idea. Thank you, Neville, I accept. See you this evening." And she swept out of the room, her hair an incandescent blaze in the morning sun.

...

In the afternoon, Harry found his way to Dumbledore's office. The headmaster, looking curiously old and frail, as if he had suddenly aged decades in the past few days, lit up at the sight of him.

"Ah, Harry! What can I do for you, my boy?"

Harry sat down in the chair Dumbledore offered him. "I've come to talk about horcruxes, headmaster."

Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "I am glad to hear it, Harry. I do not mind admitting that I have been sorely disappointed recently in many friends I thought I could trust. But you, my boy, the Chosen One, have remained steadfast in your appointed task. I must admit that I doubted you for a while, that I even suspected that _you_ were behind the theft of the resurrection stone. But I realize now that I was wrong to doubt you, Harry."

He smiled benignly, and Harry felt himself shiver.

"I fear that the Dark Lord is near, Harry," said Dumbledore softly. "At first I thought Professor Slughorn was hallucinating when he thought he saw Tom Riddle, but I fear that is not the case. The horcrux that you found on your pillow suggests otherwise. I do not understand how Lord Voldemort could have contrived to enter the castle, since its many protective charms are put in place precisely to prevent that from happening. The charms and spells protecting Hogwarts are ancient and powerful indeed, and I do not think Lord Voldemort could have entered without an accomplice on the inside. I fear, my dear boy, that he is trying to get to you."

Harry smiled a little. "I suppose so, headmaster."

"Ah, you smile at the thought!" Dumbledore regarded him for a moment over his half-moon spectacles. "I am glad you welcome the challenge, Harry. You are a brave child indeed."

"I'm not a child, Professor."

"Perhaps not." Dumbledore smiled. "Now, let's talk about the remaining horcruxes, whose precise identity you have guessed, I think, by some sort of unerring intuition. Rather impressive, Harry! The Dark Lord may have met his match in you... No need to blush, my dear boy! The compliment is most sincerely meant."

"Right..." Harry smiled to himself.

"Now, about the horcruxes... I had expected that you would have more time to look for them, but for some reason, things seem to happen so quickly lately. Do you have any ideas, Harry, about where you might want to begin looking for the remaining horcruxes?"

Harry drew a deep breath. "They are right here, Professor..."

He put a storage box, retrieved from one of the school cupboards, on Dumbledore's desk and looked at the headmaster.

It took a minute for Dumbledore to react. He simply sat and looked at the wooden box in front of him, his face whiter than snow. Then he reached out with a trembling hand and opened the lid. He stared at the contents, wordlessly.

Then he spoke. "Harry..." His voice sounded thin, feeble, like a plea. Then he found his normal voice again, although it still shook: "Harry, how did you come by these items? Did you find these on... on your pillow as well?"

Harry looked at the fragile old man in front of him. "No, headmaster. Lord Voldemort brought them here, and I destroyed each horcrux in turn, using a basilisk fang from the Chamber of Secrets."

"You... what?" Dumbledore's voice faltered. He looked at Harry with complete incomprehension. "But why would _Lord Voldemort_ bring them all here?"

"He brought them here because I asked him to," said Harry softly.

"You... you... _spoke_... to... Lord Voldemort?" Dumbledore could hardly get the words out.

"Yes."

"But.. My dear boy, you must have been in mortal danger... A wonder that he didn't kill you when he saw you..."

"I was not in danger, Professor," said Harry gently. "Tom... Lord Voldemort is no longer my enemy. He is my friend and my lover."

He thought for a moment that Dumbledore was going to faint. The headmaster grasped his desk so hard that the knuckles on his remaining healthy hand were white.

"Lord Voldemort... is your lover?"

Harry nodded. "Yes. But he is Voldemort no longer; he is Tom Riddle. We are together, as we were meant to be. I will leave Hogwarts, headmaster, and follow Tom abroad. My quest is complete now. The horcruxes are all destroyed, except for one."

"Except for one..." Dumbledore repeated, tonelessly.

"Except for me," said Harry softly. "That's all, Professor. Voldemort has been vanquished. I know this is not how you planned it, but this is how things worked out."

"You and the Dark Lord?" There were tears in Dumbledore's eyes now. "Harry, please tell me this is not true. No, I can see in your eyes that it _is _true... Harry, how can you betray us all like this? How can you betray _me_? The fate of the wizarding world depends on you, Harry! You cannot let yourself be seduced by the Dark..."

Their eyes met for a moment. Then Dumbledore reached into the pockets of his robe, took out his wand and pointed it at Harry. Dumbledore was crying now; tears rolled down his wrinkled cheeks, and his voice shook as he whispered: "I am so sorry, my dear boy. So terribly, terribly sorry for what I have to do..."


	11. The Garden

"_Avad-_"

"_Avada Kedavra!_"

Harry stared in mild surprise at the headmaster's outstretched arm and the wand pointed at his chest. _This must be death, _he thought to himself. _How odd, I had always thought I would be murdered by Voldemort. But in the end, I found love in the arms of the one I feared, and now I meet death at the hands of the mentor I loved. _He felt no fear at the thought, merely wonder, followed by a stab of agony at the thought that he would never see Tom again.

But in the next instant, he realized that the voice that had spoken the deadly curse was not Dumbledore's; it came from somewhere behind him. He watched in bewilderment as the headmaster fell lifeless to the floor._ Someone had killed Dumbledore?_

Harry spun around. Severus Snape was looming in the doorway, black-clad and pale as always, his wand still in his hand.

For a brief, absurd moment Harry found himself thinking that Dumbledore had been wrong about Snape after all; the potions master had betrayed him in the end. But then Harry recalled that he lived in a strange new reality where light and shadow fell differently from before: Voldemort loved him, Snape wished to protect him, and Dumbledore had wanted him dead.

Snape acknowledged Harry with a brief nod, then stepped across the room and gazed down at the limp body of the headmaster of Hogwarts with a look of great interest.

"You know, Harry," he said softly, "when the headmaster came to me and asked me to kill him, as a part of his intricate master plan, I begged him to reconsider. I told him he was asking the impossible. _He asked me to become his murderer!_ I pleaded with him; I asked him to find some other solution. I thought what he asked me to do was much too difficult, more than any human being could bear."

Snape's dark glance met Harry's, and his silky voice sank to a whisper. "But you know what, Harry? _It wasn't difficult at all._ I saw him point his wand at you, and I uttered the curse before he could. Just like that. Easiest thing I've ever done."

Harry looked down at the frail lifeless form on the floor. Dumbledore's wand was still clutched in his hand. A tear glittered in his snow white beard, but his blue eyes, frozen in death, had a curiously cold expression that made Harry shiver.

"Harry!" Tom's panicked voice sounded from the doorway. "Harry, are you all right? I had a sudden sense you were in danger, and I..." He paused and stared at Snape, who was standing next to Dumbledore's fragile, lifeless body. "Oh..."

"Mr. Potter is fine," said Snape smoothly and returned his wand rapidly to his pocket, "but the headmaster seems to have met with an unfortunate accident. He must have lost control over his wand. Such tragic mishaps are not uncommon among wizards of his age, I believe. Professor Dumbledore was getting quite advanced in years, and his once so brilliant mind may no longer have been quite what it used to be. Perhaps he was getting too old for magic."

Tom laughed. "Perhaps he was. Is this your doing, Severus?"

Snape looked at Tom and frowned. "Do we know each other? You are not a student at this school, are you? May I ask who you are and what you are doing here?"

"_You do not recognize me, Severus?_" said Tom quietly.

Snape looked puzzled as he scrutinized the handsome face of the boy before him. But suddenly, Harry saw a flicker of recognition in the potions master's eyes, and Snape grew even paler than usual.

"My - my Lord...?" Harry thought he could detect a note of panic in the potions master's faltering voice.

Tom smiled. "It's all right, Severus. I have changed somewhat."

With a sudden, fluid movement, Snape threw himself in front of Harry, shielding him from Tom. Harry felt dazed. What was this? Was Snape _protecting _him from Tom?

"Well, well, well." said Tom, a hint of laughter in his voice. "So that's where you true loyalties lie after all, Severus. After all these years, I learn the truth at last."

Snape's fear was palpable now, and Harry could sense that he was trying to reach for his wand. "It's all right, Professor," he said quietly. He stepped over to Tom and flung his arms around him. "Things are no longer what they used to be. The Dark Lord and I have come to an understanding."

Tom kissed Harry gently on the forehead. "Fortunately for you, Severus, it appears that you and I are on the same side after all."

Snape stared at them in rigid silence for a moment. Then his left eyebrow arched a quarter of an inch in something that could have been surprise, although it was never easy to tell with Snape. His glance fell on the box on the headmaster's desk. In silence, he reached in it and pulled out the silver locket, the glittering diadem, the delicate little cup, and the severed head of a serpent. He lined them up, wordlessly, on the desk and looked at them for a minute.

Then the potions master looked at Tom and Harry and smiled almost imperceptibly. "Well, well, well. Life is full of surprises, isn't it?"

Then he shrugged and left the room, whistling softly as he went. Then they heard his voice, more distant now: "Oh, there you are, Minerva. I am afraid the headmaster has just met with a most unfortunate accident..."

...

Dusk was beginning to fall as Tom and Harry walked together through the grounds of the ancient castle. The shadows of late afternoon had darkened to a translucent blue. The murmur of many voices drifted through an open window; Slughorn's party must be well underway by now. They heard laughter, fragments of meaningless conversation, and soft music. A voice sounded, suddenly clear, by the window: "Ron Weasley isn't here, is he? I thought he was supposed to come. I saw him this afternoon, and he seemed so _different_, all of a sudden. There was something about him I've never noticed before, something wild and dangerous." Someone giggled: "Romilda, I think you are in _love..._", and the first voice said, "Perhaps I am. How odd, I never thought about him as attractive before..." The rest of the conversation was drowned in music and voices. A string instrument began to play, and the melody that floated out into the twilight had a mournful otherworldliness to it that made Harry shiver.

A solitary figure walked towards them through the dusk, and Harry saw that it was Sirius. He looked more insubstantial now, as if he was about to fade, along with the remaining afternoon light, into the approaching darkness.

"Harry!" Sirius' voice was also becoming dim now, turning into a faint echo. "I am glad I found you; I wanted to say goodbye."

Harry reached out, startled, for his godfather. He folded Sirius in his arms, but even the embrace felt less that real. Sirius was there, but somehow it felt to Harry as if he were hugging a loved one in a dream that would only last for a moment longer.

"Are you leaving, Sirius?"

Sirius nodded, and Harry saw that he looked less haggard now, more peaceful. "It is time for me to move on."

"Then Ginny-?"

A shadow of something that could have been either sorrow or a smile passed over Sirius' dark, handsome face as he whispered: "Ginny... has found her way back to the land of the living."

He glanced towards a garden pavilion some distance away, and Harry could make out two figures within, seated close together. Ginny and Neville?

"Goodbye, Harry. Look after yourself." Sirius's smile had some of its old warmth in it now. "And you... his new friend, whoever you are... look after him, too, will you?"

"I give you my word, Mr. Black," said Tom softly as Sirius slowly faded away to nothing.

They walked on, away from the party and the music. As they passed a cluster of trees, Harry saw a desolate figure sitting on a garden bench some distance away. It appeared that Slughorn had escaped from the merriment of his own party. The professor appeared lost in thought, and there was something forlorn about him that stirred Harry's heart.

"Tom," he whispered. "Before we go... I think you should say goodbye to Slughorn. Be kind to him."

Tom stared at him, his grey eyes dark in the gathering blue light of dusk. "You want me to speak to Slughorn? Why, Harry?"

Harry looked at his lover thoughtfully. "Because I feel pity for him," he said softly. "And because he loves you as much as I do."

"You feel pity for him... But he is just a vain, ridiculous old man." There was wonder in Tom's voice. Then Harry felt a soft kiss against his lips, and Tom whispered. "How astonishing you are, Harry. Where did you learn to feel so much compassion?"

Harry thought about it for a moment. He looked at the ground as he answered: "From Voldemort. From _you_. I saw what you became because you lacked compassion, and I decided that I did not want to be like you."

Tom was silent. Then he whispered: "I seem to have forgotten a great deal about being human. It's been so long. You will have to teach me, Harry."

Then Tom walked towards Slughorn in the distance. Harry watched, unseen, from the deepening shadows among the trees. He saw Slughorn stagger to his feet as Tom approached, his hand clutched to his chest as if he was on the verge of a heart attack. Then Slughorn and Tom spoke to each other for a few moments. Harry could not hear their voices, and he knew that he would never ask Tom what had passed between them. Slughorn and Tom shook hands as they parted, and the old professor sank back down on the bench. Tom began to walk away from him, but then he hesitated and turned back. He stood and looked at Slughorn in apparent irresolution for a moment, and then he leaned over and kissed him briefly on the lips. Then he turned away and walked toward Harry and the shadows, while Slughorn sat absolutely still, his hand to his lips, as if he wanted to touch the kiss that had been there a moment before.

"Come, Harry." Tom's voice sounded next to him now. "There is something I want to show you before we leave this enchanted castle for good. Hogwarts holds many secrets, perhaps more than we shall ever know, but there is one I would like to show you."

They wandered in silence through the labyrinthine gardens of the ancient castle. Tom took Harry's hand and led the way through creaky gates and hidden doorways, along soft mossy paths that Harry had never seen. Finally, they paused in front of a tall crumbling brick wall overgrown with ivy.

"Here," Tom said. "I found this place by accident when I was a student here, and it took my breath away. I had forgotten all about it until now, but walking with you at dusk made me remember. So many things have begun to come back to me lately..."

Tom reached out and touched the old bricks, and a doorway opened in the wall before them. They stepped through it, and Harry looked around in wonder. They were in a small garden, surrounded by brick walls on all sides, completely hidden from view. The garden was wild and overgrown, but did not appear neglected or forlorn; rather, it seemed to Harry that this must be what an enchanted garden looked like when allowed to flourish in secret, away from human eyes. He did not know much about gardens, apart from what he had learned by his hours of weeding the tidy, regimented flower beds at the Dursleys, but he had a vague sense that the multitudes of fragrant flowers in this garden should not be in bloom during the same season. There were purple hyacinths and yellow snapdragons, climbing roses in shades of pink and yellow and a darker crimson, blushing eglantine, delicate wisps of wisteria cascading from faded trellises, silvery dusty miller, and tiny blue forget-me-nots. Dark purple grapes gleamed on the vines that climbed the crumbling walls, and gnarled old apple trees were heavy with fruit.

Tom squeezed his hand and led him gently to the center of the garden. There was an old sundial there, half hidden in a wild cluster of lenten roses. Lenten roses in autumn? There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the seasons in this magical garden. Perhaps time itself was different in here. Harry brushed the flowers aside and tried to make out the almost illegible words on the face of the sundial in the fading light. He traced the letters with his fingers and read hesitantly: "_Lux et umbra vicissem sed semper amor."_

And Tom repeated the words softly in English: _"Light and shadow by turns, but always love."_

_..._

_Fin. _


End file.
